J.G. Petrucci Data Center, Allentown, Pennsylvania

The J.G. Petrucci Company has proposed a 100 megawatt data center, a 146,000 square foot building with its own electrical substation, at 1024 North Bradford Street on Allentown's East Side in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, next to Coca-Cola Park, recently renamed Jefferson Park. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission's planning committee reviewed the plan in September 2026 and warned Allentown not to approve it without basic facts about how it would run. The full commission was scheduled to take up the review on September 24, 2026; no result has been published, and the decision itself rests with Allentown, whose planning department must first settle which zoning rules apply.

Allentown's City Council unanimously passed Bill 52 on August 5, hours after the Petrucci application arrived, confining data centers to the Industrial Manufacturing district, raising the setback from homes, schools and child care sites from 200 feet to 500 feet, and setting an 8 acre minimum lot for larger facilities. Council solicitor Maria Montero has said the new rules apply to the Bradford Street plan under the pending ordinance doctrine, but a 2022 Commonwealth Court ruling that the doctrine does not cover land development plans leaves it unclear which version governs. The Executive Education Academy Charter School sits across Bradford Street, within the setback under either version, and at 500 feet it would be virtually impossible to build the 146,000 square foot facility.

The regional planners found the submission left out the cooling system, water demand, total electrical demand, standby generation, the location of mechanical equipment, and expected noise, vibration and heat. Given the region's drought, they asked whether the building would be air cooled, water cooled, evaporative or hybrid, and asked the developer to show PPL Electric Utilities can carry the load without hurting service to existing customers. The plan's 94 car and 36 truck spaces, they noted, look like a layout for a freight heavy industrial use rather than a data center, and nearby Union Boulevard is already a "high crash corridor," with the ballpark and the school adding to traffic.

A spokesman for the developer said the project "would pay its own way for power and use advanced cooling systems, such as closed-loop technology, that dramatically reduce water usage and do not require local water for cooling," and that the missing requirements "will be completed in the coming weeks and months." An LLC registered to Petrucci's New Jersey business address owns the 9.5 acre site, marketed as the Allentown Flex Center; the Allentown Planning Commission gave a warehouse there conditional final approval in 2022.