Brian O’Neill understands why people are resisting his planned data-center projects in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. But the only input that matters to him is the law, he says.
“I’m entitled to build a data center. I’m going to do it the right way because I have the right to do it the right way. And you can jump up and down and scream all you want, but that’s the bottom line,” O’Neill said in an Aug. 6 interview with the Local.
“I realize I’m not going to get an audience, and I’m not going to make friends. I’m going to have to win it legally, and I’m going to,” he added.
The prolific Philadelphia-area developer and founder of MLP Ventures submitted plans to build large data centers in Plymouth Township and Upper Merion Township this year. He is seeking approval for a 4.5-million-square-foot campus near King of Prussia and a two-million-square-foot facility at 900 Conshohocken Road in Plymouth Township. These projects, which are situated less than 1,000 feet from the nearest residential neighborhoods, will have on-site natural gas turbines and diesel backup generators.
Technology firms and other developers, like O’Neill, want to build the massive facilities to support the artificial intelligence boom. But proposals have received intense pushback from surrounding community members, who worry about the potential impact on their health, utility bills, quality of life and the environment. Upper Merion and Plymouth Township are no different.
In the interview with the Local, O’Neill said he’s confident the projects will come to fruition no matter the local resistance. He plans to build more data centers but wouldn’t disclose where.
“We’re in a technical revolution. Data centers are powering that revolution. If we go with it, we’ll be a vibrant, tech-heavy and strong community,” he said.
For his most recent move, he filed challenges to Plymouth Township’s zoning ordinance — where he’s proposed to build a data center at the site of the former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill. The township’s ordinance does not have data centers as a permitted use in a heavy industrial zoning district, but it allows for warehouses and laboratories. O’Neill’s team has filed both a special exception application and validity challenge. Both are submitted to the zoning hearing board. The validity challenge claims the ordinance is exclusionary towards data centers.
The township council has expressed its opposition to both moves, saying that data centers are not the same as warehouses. In response to the validity challenge, council members accused O’Neill of intimidation and bullying.
“Council will not be intimidated into abandoning its responsibility to the people of Plymouth Township,” Council vice-chair Kristin Frederick Leonard said in a July 27 news release.
Gov. Josh Shapiro — who’s typically a supporter of data center development — condemned O’Neill’s validity challenge on Facebook. “This is the exact wrong way to do development here in Pennsylvania,” he said. “I’m a ‘hell no.’”
O’Neill said the council members’ bullying claims are a “crock of s***” and that he agreed to most of the township’s requests for mitigating the project’s impacts. He said seeing township officials oppose the plan on the record motivated him to file the challenge.
“I’m still willing to negotiate in good faith with them for as long as possible. But they’re running out of time,” he said.
Council President Lynne Viscio said the council told O’Neill’s attorney that the entire set of conditions, not parts of it, was non-negotiable. They received the validity challenge after that.
The projects
O’Neill says he wants to turn the Upper Merion sites into “the first integrated AI life sciences building in the world.” The facilities will be used for life sciences, drug discovery, financial trading, banking and other uses, he said. They are situated at The Discovery Labs, a tech, healthcare and life-sciences office campus at King of Prussia’s Renaissance Park that is run by O’Neill’s company.
He described the former Alan Wood Steel Company’s Cleveland-Cliffs mill in Plymouth as “a perfect industrial site.”
“I grew up hanging out with my friends that worked there,” he said. “We fed them and gave them drinks after their shifts in my father’s restaurant in West Conshohocken, and it’s a perfect building to do what I want to do with it.”
Many neighboring residents disagree. A Change.org petition opposing the Upper Merion data center has more than 17,000 signatures, while Plymouth Township’s has more than 4,000. Residents have packed public meetings and given hours of emotional testimony, citing concerns about air pollution, health impacts, noise, light, greenhouse gas emissions and other factors.
O’Neill said he sympathizes with people’s concerns, but believes many are based on misinformation. The data centers in Plymouth and Upper Merion will not draw water from the Schuylkill River, as he plans to use a closed-loop system to cool the equipment, he said. He said the project will use its own electricity to reduce the impact on residents’ utilities bills, use “dark sky standards” to limit the amount of light pollution, and contain microgrids to lower greenhouse gas emissions. He’s talked with Delaware’s Bloom Energy about using fuel cells at the facility, which would reduce air pollution.
He says the projects will provide significant economic boosts for the towns. The Plymouth Township data center would generate $424 million in new tax revenue over 20 years, with the majority set to be allocated to the Colonial School District, according to a report that O’Neill commissioned by 4Ward Planning. He did not disclose the identity of the tenant.
O’Neill says his team hired sound consultants and invested in sound-attenuation measures. But what’s concerned residents is reports of infrasound from people living near data centers. This is sound that cannot be heard by humans, but long-term exposure can cause various health impacts.
Some residents have said in meetings that they don’t trust O’Neill due to his track record. At an Upper Merion Planning Commission meeting in May, Upper Merion’s tax collector criticized his company for failing to pay its taxes on time over the past few years. Concerned Citizens of Montour County obtained a letter written by O’Neill to Shapiro’s office, in which he called community appeals on data centers “frivolous.”
“I one hundred percent support that, and I would write that letter again 500 times and put it on the billboard,” O’Neill said.
The most recent meetings
Christine Bertino, a member of Conshohocken’s sewer authority board, handed out “No Data Center” stickers in front of Colonial Middle School in Plymouth Township before last Thursday’s zoning board hearing. She said the data center case reminds of her of the trash-to-steam plant built in 1992. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has fined the plant’s operator, Covanta Plymouth, for emissions and compliance issues. She said she’s worried about repeating history.
“The trash-to-steam plant promised a lot of things. It’s going to burn clean. It was steam, not pollution,” she said. “Fast forward all these years. That’s not what’s happening at all. It’s noisy. It’s disruptive. It’s stinky. It creates pollution. You hear it all the time.”
At the meeting, attendees held up signs saying “Shame” and “Make Conshohocken livable,” and wore shirts and stickers saying “No Data Centers.”
O’Neill’s attorney, Ed Campbell, questioned Richard Roseberry, senior principal at Colliers Engineering & Design, about the town’s zoning ordinance. Roseberry said a data center shares the same characteristics as a warehouse, research and development, and manufacturing, which are permitted uses. That prompted boos and shouts from the audience. The board’s solicitor, David Sander, reprimanded the audience for the interruptions, saying they were dragging out the meeting.
“We can’t get a record, and the zoning board can’t decide this case, if we can’t hear the questions and answers,” he said.
A date isn’t set for the next Plymouth Township data center meeting. If the zoning board grants the special exception, the project would move on to the land development process.
In July, Upper Merion planning commissioners voted not to recommend three out of five of O’Neill’s projects to the board of supervisors. They are scheduled to discuss the last two this Wednesday. The board of supervisors is expected to consider the proposal at its meeting this Thursday.
For the planning commission meeting, O’Neill says he plans to make a presentation, accompanied by a technology team.
“We will sue or use the legal system to do anything we have to, to enforce our rights,” he said.
Abby Weiss is an environmental reporter for the Local and a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at abby@chestnuthilllocal.com.
