Catalyst Commercial Development LLC data center, Jessup Borough, Pennsylvania

Catalyst Commercial Development LLC, a West Conshohocken developer, has filed plans for a 487,000-square-foot data center on 48 acres at Sunnyside Road and Alberigi Drive in Jessup Borough, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, directly next to Invenergy's Lackawanna Energy Center gas-fired power plant. The August 2025 land development application, filed by an affiliate called Sunnyside Road Associates, projects construction starting September 1, 2026 and finishing a year later.

The site already had approvals for a 334,800-square-foot warehouse, and the data center, under 50 feet tall, would take a similar footprint. Catalyst bought the 48.3 acres from Pompey Coal Company in 2024 for $3.4 million; Pompey had earlier sold the neighboring land for the 1,500-megawatt power plant.

Catalyst's larger Jessup plan has already failed. Its affiliate Breaker Street Associates sought six 130-foot data centers totaling nearly 1.1 million square feet on 131 acres off Breaker Street, and in December 2025 the Jessup Zoning Hearing Board unanimously refused the zoning relief it needed for a switchyard and substation on residential land. That developer can appeal to county court.

The Sunnyside Road site is where Jessup now wants data centers to go. In August 2025 the Borough Council unanimously created an overlay district that limits future data centers to industrial land south of the Casey Highway, including the land around the Lackawanna Energy Center, and makes them conditional uses that need a public hearing. The rules cap buildings at 50 feet, require proof from utilities that they can serve a data center without cutting service to residents, keep diesel generators at least 500 feet from homes and require noise studies. "It's not like we don't want one, we just want it in the industrial park where it belongs," Councilman Gregg Betti said.

The Midvalley is crowded with proposals: in Archbald, the Wildcat Ridge campus would cover nearly 400 mountainside acres, and Project Gravity and the Archbald Data & Energy Center are also planned, while another large campus is proposed along Interstate 380 in Clifton and Covington townships.

The Sunnyside Road application is dated August 13, 2025, six days before the council adopted the overlay rules on August 19. Applications received before that vote are grandfathered under the borough's 2020 zoning, which allowed data centers as principally permitted uses in light industrial zones. Catalyst could not be reached for comment in January 2026.