Atlas Data Center (South Whitehall), South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania

Edged wants to build Project Atlas, a data center campus of three buildings totaling 725 megawatts of power, on about 410 acres of farmland at 2493 N. Cedar Crest Boulevard in South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, outside Allentown, Pennsylvania. On September 23, 2026, before more than 100 people at Parkland High School, across the street from the site, the township's planning commission took the plan under advisement without a decision, and the deadline for a decision moved from October 31 to December 31.

Edged first proposed six data centers of more than 5.1 million square feet before cutting the plan to three buildings of about 492,000 square feet each, plus an administration building, a warehouse and an on-site substation screened by a 12-foot berm. The company says it will invest more than $8.9 billion and pay about $16.5 million a year in taxes, and Chief Investment Officer John Callahan said in July that no electricity costs "will be passed on to local residents."

Residents have opposed the plan since it surfaced. "As a voter in South Whitehall, I can absolutely say I do not want this in my backyard," resident Spurgeon Dunbar told the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission in January. Regional planning staff raised noise, nighttime lighting and possible sinkholes, and committee member Christopher Amato said he had "significant concerns about electrical rates" and the site's karst topography. A Change.org petition against the project had more than 9,150 signatures in July.

In July, after a planning commission meeting, text messages disparaging residents' appearance and intelligence circulated on social media; WFMZ reported they were sent by a now-former senior development manager for Scannell Properties. Edged's head of marketing, Marcie Kaplan, said the comments were his own and did not reflect the company's values. Edged says the Parkland School District faces a $15.7 million funding gap for 2026-27, and representative Garland Christopher asked, "Who is going to bridge that if Project Atlas is not here?"

Elsewhere in Lehigh County, in Upper Macungie Township, the zoning board rejected a similar data center on Air Products' former headquarters site, and the company confirmed in August 2026 it would not appeal. Edged has said it will return to South Whitehall with a revised plan. The township's planning commission now has until December 31 to make a recommendation, but the South Whitehall Township Board of Commissioners has the final say on the land development plan.