Nov. 10, 2025
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
A 2.6 million square-foot data center is planned for the former Air Products headquarters, according to a column published Sunday.
That’s about 60 acres, not counting parking, access roads and the rest. Roughly the area of 60 football fields, or slightly larger than Housenick park in Bethlehem Township.
In the Morning Call column, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission Executive Director Becky Bradley dropped this data bomb:
“The region already has a few small data centers, and we are aware that several developers are actively marketing the region for more. We also have an active development plan for a 2.6 million square foot data mega center on the former Air Products headquarters site in Upper Macungie,” Bradley wrote.
There was an earlier plan for Prologis to build warehouses at the site, but that fell through.
Thanks to former Morning Call reporter Debbie Garlicki, who read all the way to the 14th paragraph to find the Upper Macungie item and posted the information on Facebook.
Data centers are immense warehouses that hold computer servers. They consume immense amounts of electricity and need a lot of water. A single big center can use as much power as 500,000 homes, Bradley wrote.
There is no surprise that data centers would be built here. PPL Corp. Chief Executive Vincent Sorgi has acknowledged talks with companies that use data centers. They are essential for Big Technology and Artificial Intelligence, and companies such as Amazon, Google, Apple and the like need them.
At the same time, they raise issues for residents: Will the cost of electricity go up? Maybe the price of water? Do data centers provide many jobs per acre, and will they create a low-level noise 24 hours per day, the sound of thousands of computer servers churning out data?
I was in Iceland recently, which houses many data centers because electricity from geothermal energy and water power is cheap. That’s not the case here.
Bradley says the rise of data centers shows how planning for growth requires constant adaptation.
For Upper Macungie residents, the real issue is: what comes next?
— Disclosure: I own shares in PPL, Amazon, Google and Apple.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 