Clarks Summit Data Center, Newton Township, Pennsylvania

Popca LLC's proposed two-building data center campus on Newton Road outside Clarks Summit was blocked by Newton Township's zoning officer in February 2026, and the Archbald company appealed to the township zoning hearing board, which scheduled a hearing for April 27, 2026. The campus, the tenth proposed in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, would sit on about 90 acres known as the East Newton Ira Tripp Tract, in the township's rural resource zoning district.

Mark Gawron, the land's former owner and the company's contact, filed the zoning application on January 21, 2026 and estimated the project's cost at $280 million. Zoning officer D. Scot Haan found that a data center is not an allowed use in the township's rural resource district. Gawron's lawyers argued the use fits the township's commercial, institutional, utility or light industrial categories.

Lackawanna County is weighing the cumulative effect of more than a dozen data centers and power plants proposed there. In September 2026 the county commissioners hired a firm to study the air quality and health effects, with a report due in 90 days. "The people who live in Lackawanna County don't breathe air one project at a time. They breathe the cumulative air of Lackawanna County," said Commissioner Bill Gaughan.

The Newton Township Zoning Hearing Board decides the appeal; the hearing was scheduled for April 27, 2026, and no result has been published.