Oct. 4, 2026
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Bethlehem City Council will hold a public hearing Tuesday on zoning changes to limit the development of data centers in the city.
One has already been proposed for Bethlehem, at the old Crowder Service Center off Route 22.
The public hearing is just a step in the process. It will be followed by two votes at later meetings, with the final decision perhaps in November.
At that rate, maybe plans for a few more centers will be filed before new rules take effect. That’s government, though. Big business can work around the clock, while government has to follow a process.
The city can’t ban data centers but it can place limits on where they can go and how big they can be, limits that can be challenged by developers. If an ordinance is deemed to be written to ban the centers through clever language, it won’t withstand legal challenges.
For example, banning data centers within 10 miles of the Lehigh River would have the effect of prohibiting them. That would not survive a legal challenge. Zoning law requires that the ordinance provide for all uses. Right now, the city zoning ordinance doesn’t even have a definition for a data center.
Here’s a link to the proposed changes for the big-box buildings full of computer servers. Bethlehem is one of many towns trying to catch up with the development of “hyperscale” data centers used by big technology companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Apple to support Artificial Intelligence.
Amazon has recently promised to be good and generous as it pursues data centers.
Data centers are not new. They used to be known as server farms. The new ones are much bigger.
There will be more on the way. Data centers are backed by the federal government, utilities such as PPL, and the world’s biggest technology companies.
City Council has a big agenda Tuesday, but the public hearing comes first.
City Council will meet twice on Tuesday. At 6 p.m., there will be a meeting about the city’s capital plan, which is always interesting even though it’s more of a projection than a plan.
Council will meet again at 7 p.m. for the public hearing and lots of other things. Here’s a link to the agenda.
Both meetings will be at Town Hall and will be shown on the Internet.
Disclosure: I own stock in Amazon and Apple.
