UPPER MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. — Two years after township officials granted Air Products final approval to convert its former headquarters into a trio of warehouses, the Fortune 500 company is recycling the plan to host three data center structures instead.
News broke earlier this week that plans are in play to build 2.6 million square feet of space to house a data center on the 194-acre site. Details of the proposal, however, were not immediately clear as the township had not finished processing the proposal.
LehighValleyNews.com was able to review the documents Thursday.
The submission, which totals thousands of pages detailing anticipated traffic, stormwater runoff, water demands and soil conditions, shows Air Products' data center proposal closely aligns with site plans the township previously approved in 2023.
Plans then were for logistics company Prologis to own the warehouses, but that never came to fruition.
An Air Products spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.
The latest plans did not appear to state who would ultimately operate the facilities if constructed.
The revised plans would still use the same general layout calling for three large buildings — one with 1.2 million square feet of space, another with 926,250 square feet and a third with 435,600 square feet.
Air Products still wants to reroute the property's traffic to Cetronia Road, which it wants to reconstruct and redirect to better handle the increased traffic.
And the proposal would still utilize 95,000 gallons of water a day; because the water demands were identical to the warehouse proposal, the submission reuses the initial 2022 documents.
The main difference between the two submissions is a sharp drop in expected traffic.
If the site became three warehouses, Air Products anticipated it would have attracted 1,534 cars and 286 trucks to the property every day. A data center at the same size would attract 930 cars and 19 trucks a day, according to Air Products' traffic studies.
One thing the documents don't show — and that Air Products isn't required to present — is the amount of electricity the data centers would demand.
The submission shows that PPL would be prepared to connect the facilities to its grid, as required by state law.
The property has sat vacant since Air Products moved into a new headquarters about a mile away on Mill Creek Road, in 2021.
Lehigh County's website shows the Hamilton Boulevard property has an assessed value of $22.2 million.
The next step would be for the proposal to appear before the township planning commission and the board of supervisors for review.
The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission would also need a chance to weigh in on the proposal and how well it meets existing planning and zoning regulations for the site and region. No hearings have been scheduled to date.
Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, disclosed the data center plan in a column published Sunday in The Morning Call.
By mirroring the existing plan, Air Products is likely easing the project's path toward approval. Municipalities have stronger grounds to reject a proposal if the project clashes with existing planning and zoning for a site.
