PPL Pays $3 Million for Property in South Whitehall, Not Far From Proposed Site of Data Center

**Update: Please see reader’s comment below the story; the sale may include additional acreage**

Feb. 15, 2026

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

PPL Corp. has paid $3 million for a 9.6-acre property in South Whitehall Township, according to Lehigh County records.

(Note: a reader said the sale may include 21 adjacent acres)

The 2216 Herman Lane farmstead is on the township’s historic resource inventory. It is also near the site of a proposed data center at 2493 N. Cedar Crest Boulevard, close to Parkland High School.

I see nothing on the township website to indicate a connection, but the properties are not far from each other and data centers consume huge amounts of electricity. PPL Chief Executive Vincent Sorgi has discussed data centers moving into the company’s service area.

From the township website: CDE Acquisitions, LLC is proposing to develop a data center campus on a site located at 2493 North Cedar Crest Boulevard in South Whitehall Township. This project will be known as Project Atlas. The site consists of three parcels that total 410.6528 acres. The site is bordered by North Cedar Crest Boulevard (State Route 1019) to the west, Orefield Road (State Route 4006) and residential properties to the north, Mauch Chunk Road (State Route 1017) to the east, and an industrial site to the south.

Maybe it’s a coincidence? PPL also has a training center at 1639 Church Road in South Whitehall, and multiple uses of the Herman Lane land are possible.

We shall see. Here’s comment from a statement of economic impact of Project Atlas, including a claim of 440 full-time jobs once the data center is running:

The project, a six-building data center facility sited on vacant land south of Orefield Road (SR 4006),
between Mauch Chunk Road (SR 1017) and North Cedar Crest Boulevard (SR 1019), is projected to
generate significant economic impacts. During the construction phase, it is estimated to produce a one
time economic impact of $2.9 billion for South Whitehall Township, supporting approximately an
estimated 3,390 full-time equivalent (FTE) job-years.1 Once fully operational, the combined facilities are
expected to create an annual economic impact of $99.5 million for South Whitehall Township, sustaining
470 jobs from direct and spinoff activity. Importantly, these positions will primarily be high-skilled roles
in engineering and technical services, attracting talent to the area without overwhelming local
infrastructure or public services.

Terms of the sale are below. The property was owned by the Guth family for many years.

Data centers are huge buildings filled with computer equipment that use huge amounts of electricity and require lots of water for cooling.

The companies that make up “Big Tech” need them. Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and more. Computer chips made by Nvidia, AMD and other companies are used in the centers.

South Whitehall’s Planning Commission has already discussed the proposal for a data center once, and there will be much more talking ahead.

The purchase was made under the name PPL Electric Utilities, the PPL Corp. subsidiary that provides electricity in central and eastern Pennsylvania.

Disclosure: I own shares in PPL (NYSE:PPL) and some of the big-tech companies involved in data centers.