BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The one data center proposed in Bethlehem could not be built on its site under the zoning rules City Council takes up Tuesday, but those rules won’t apply to it.
The two-story project at 2184 Industrial Drive sits in the city’s Planned Industrial district, where the ordinance would ban data centers. Boyle Construction, Paxos and Tensor IQ announced it in August, with a projected peak demand of about 120 megawatts.
The lot would also fail the new setback. City zoning and parcel maps show that every part of the 6.75-acre site is within 1,000 feet of residentially zoned property, the minimum the rules would require.
The nearest residential lots, across Route 22, are about 200 feet away. Within 1,000 feet are 99 lots in the city’s single-family district and two larger parcels zoned for medium-density housing.
The rules don’t reach it because the plans came first. Planning Director Cathy Fletcher told the Planning Commission on Aug. 25 that anything filed before the amendment passes would be reviewed under current rules.
Staff asked the developers to submit the plans and studies the draft ordinance lists anyway, and they agreed, she said.
The project has not appeared on a Planning Commission agenda, and Fletcher said its timing would depend on the city’s review. The commission canceled its Oct. 8 meeting.
Residents can weigh in at a public hearing on the ordinance, Bill 28-2026, at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Town Hall, 10 E. Church St., before council’s regular agenda. Public comment is limited to five minutes per speaker, and the meeting streams live on the city’s YouTube channel.
Council plans a first vote that night and a final vote Oct. 20, city planning staff told the Planning Commission on Sept. 10.
Bethlehem’s zoning now allows data centers by right in its Light Industrial, Planned Industrial and Industrial districts.
The bill would bar them from the first two, which cover about 600 acres on the city’s zoning map. In the Industrial district, they would need a special exception, and the Zoning Hearing Board would review each case.
The city cannot ban data centers outright. State law requires zoning to allow every land use somewhere, and rules cannot make a use infeasible to build, Fletcher told the commission.
The rules would raise yard setbacks from 20 feet to 80 feet and buffer yards from 15 feet to 40 feet, city staff told a council committee Aug. 11.
Data centers would also have to sit 1,000 feet from residential zones, homes, schools, daycares, parks, hospitals and community recreation centers. Noise at the property line could not exceed 60 decibels by day or 55 at night.
Developers would have to file environmental, water, sewer, sound, vibration, emergency, and equipment-disposal studies up front, plus an energy plan with the power company’s confirmation it can serve the site.
If the utility says it can, the city must accept that because it cannot regulate utilities overseen by the state Public Utility Commission, staff told the committee.
The Industrial Drive building would stand about 60 feet tall, twice the height of the 29-foot building it would replace, a Lehigh Valley Planning Commission review of the plans shows.
About a fifth of its power would come from on-site natural gas generation, with diesel backup, the developers told the commission. They estimate its cooling system would need about 3 million gallons of water and 1 million gallons of glycol to fill.
The regional commission called the city’s ordinance “legally defensible” in a separate letter and recommended that generators, cooling equipment and substations also meet the setbacks.
“We’re not trying to prohibit an emerging technology or economic use,” Planning Commission Chairman Robert Melosky said Aug. 25, before the commission voted 4-0 to recommend the rules.
Resident Bill Scheirer told the council committee Aug. 11 that relying on the Zoning Hearing Board to deny special exceptions was not reassuring, and that the city has no room for data centers.
