Allegheny DC Property Co. LLC purchased the land for $14.3 million from Cheswick Plant Environmental Redevelopment on Nov. 19.
But whether the site actually becomes a sprawling data center will be decided by a Springdale Borough Council vote on a conditional use permit on Dec. 16. That potential approval would launch the project into its second phase, said Brian Regli, a consultant for developer Allegheny DC.
"The next phase has just as much public engagement, it has just as much consideration from expert authorities, and it has a lot of different moving parts, because now you go from a schematic design, which is what's possible, to what you actually want to build," Mr. Regli said.
Constructing the center would take hundreds of millions of dollars, he said, with a baseline of $1 million per megawatt and a slated 180 MW facility.
"That is millions of dollars of investment in energy, in architecture, in engineering, in civil work, in environmental remediation, in utility infrastructure," he said. "Before you even take a spade in the ground and break ground, you're going to spend millions of dollars to really make sure that what you are building is what the tenant is going to need."
In mid-November, the borough's planning commission unanimously approved the project with some conditions (there are still some variances waiting approval), which places the data center's fate in the council's hands.
If the council were to vote no — or even yes — that wouldn't be the end of the conversation, Mr. Regli said. Until a data center goes up, negotiations are continuous, he said. And if the council's answer is no, Allegheny DC has options, including reapplication.
The 565,000-square-foot proposed data center would reanimate the site of the former coal-fired power plant, alongside another 200,000 square feet of ancillary service buildings. This would take up more than one-third of the 47.2-acre parcel. In 2025, the county assessed the site's total value at $1.75 million, according to Allegheny County land records. A dedicated website to the project, called springdaledatacenter.com, placed Springdale's current tax revenue from the site at just over $17,000 — if a data center is erected, it projects that tax revenue would shoot to nearly $660,000.
Sitting along the Allegheny River and bordered by South Duquesne Avenue, Pittsburgh Street and Porter Street, the site is in the borough's industrial district. Although the industrial district suits industrial development, Springdale's zoning ordinances do not specifically account for data centers, which is why Allegheny DC applied for a "conditional use permit" in August.
As of Tuesday, the developer said no tenants are involved yet.
Mr. Regli said that a rough timeline would be to apply for permits by fall 2026, begin construction in 2027 and potentially start operations in 2028. Much of data center development and logistics are novel, he said, so permitting will take some time and thorough conversations to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Neighbors voice concerns
Residents have shown up to meetings to voice concerns every step of the way.
Last week, the council met for more than five hours with about 50 residents, as Allegheny DC presented expert testimony and fielded questions about noise levels and energy use. Some residents expressed their belief in the council's ability to "make the right choice," while others called for their representatives to vote against the project altogether.
"My fiance and I chose Springdale because we believe this place to be prime real estate for young families looking for a nice, quiet, safe community — to not only just live in, grow, raise children — just be a part of something that's greater," said resident James Binnix during public comment last week.
"But I did not sign up for an opportunity zone for big tech."
Noise, in particular, was a contentious issue. For the better part of an hour, council members honed in on the issue of continuous noise, grilling a sound engineering expert on what the average 55 decibels would really sound like.
Concerns in Springdale are shared by communities across the commonwealth, including in Conshohocken, Montgomery County. There is a growing nationwide pattern of weariness surrounding data center development.
With decades in development under his belt, Mr. Regli is familiar with community feedback and pushback. It's all integral to the process, he said. And while he finds most concerns completely valid, he said the real question is "what is the easiest to mitigate and what's the hardest to mitigate?"
"Water is one of the easier [challenges] relative to some of the other ones that are out there," he said. "I would say the most intractable one is energy prices. It's a legitimate concern. I've stood up in meetings where people are blaming this data center for an increase in rates. And it would be wrong of me to tell people that their rates have not increased or will not increase."
Many residents took their allotted time in public comment to voice grid concerns and fears over skyrocketing utility bills.
Mr. Regli countered that one data center in Springdale is not the problem.
"You could build that data center or not. One way or the other, there are hundreds of data centers that are going to get built in the United States over the next three to five to seven years, perhaps even thousands," Mr. Regli said. "So that consumption is going to happen, that demand is going to be imposed upon the market. And once you have more demand, and you still have the same amount of supply, you're going to increase prices."
Mr. Regli said the rebalancing of rates has to happen from "the bottom, up," at the local and regional community levels where demand and supply can grow together.
"In the end, every project is local," Mr. Regli said. "Everything that needs to get built can get built in a way that mitigates some of the challenges that people talk about, and power is the most complicated one.
"It is one that no individual company or data center can solve, but the technologies that are available give rise to real solutions ... and to bring those to market. Part of what excites me about this particular development is I think we can be a piece of that."
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