This summer has brought a flurry of activity from municipalities across the Poconos as they adopt new zoning ordinances to prepare for potential data center development. You can learn more about data centers here.
The Poconos’ recent experience with rapid warehouse/distribution center growth has taught the region the importance of getting zoning ordinances on the books to address this next wave of highly-impactful development. Ordinances give municipalities the power to control where data center development occurs and under what conditions. Without them, municipalities lose this control. That is especially true in Pennsylvania because our Supreme Court has held that the Pennsylvania constitution requires every municipality to allow for every legitimate land use somewhere within its borders. This means municipalities do not have the option of saying “no thank you” to data centers, and a municipality that fails to address data centers in its zoning ordinance runs the risk of a data center developer bringing a legal challenge against the ordinance. If the developer wins that challenge, they must be allowed to develop wherever they please. Municipalities whose ordinances do not allow for data centers remain vulnerable to these challenges up to the moment they formally announce their intention to adopt an ordinance to “cure” the exclusion.
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