Project North data center, Archbald Borough, Pennsylvania

Project North is one of six data center campuses proposed in Archbald, a Lackawanna County borough of about 7,500 people in Pennsylvania's Lackawanna Valley, where developers plan 51 buildings covering 14% of the town. Anthony Domiano Jr., whose family runs a chain of local car dealerships, sold a large amount of land to Project South and Project North. Project North's developer, size and power have not been made public; it applied to the borough as a principal permitted use under Archbald's 2023 zoning, which lets a data center proceed with preliminary and final land development approval and no conditions tailored to the industry.

The people with most at stake live at Valley View Estates, a trailer park whose owner has agreed to sell to a data center developer and which is set to be surrounded by data centers; residents were told they would be evicted on April 15, 2026. Sharon Williams, a home health aide making $17.50 an hour, pays $390 a month in lot rent there, and the county's public housing is roughly 98% occupied. "Everybody's worried about where they're going to go," said resident Matthew Bucksbee, who with his fiancée, Candace May, may be able to move to a friend's land in Forest City.

The borough's rules were written with developers in the room. Documents published by DeSmog show developers played a significant role in the data center overlay ordinance passed in November 2025: Council President Dave Moran requested a 1,000-yard buffer between data centers and neighboring properties, and it was whittled down to 300 yards in the final language. Council member Erin Owen, who opposed the data centers from the outset, said: "All the impacts will be terrible." At a hearing, Nick Farris of Provident Real Estate Advisors, representing the developer of the neighboring Project Scott, kept telling a jeering crowd, "It's going to be away from everyone," and put the tax payoff at roughly $20 million a year for Archbald, $50 million for Lackawanna County and $100 million for the Valley View School District.

Since then the ground has shifted. On March 27, 2026 the borough council voted 5-0 to deny Project Scott, an 18-building campus next to a borough park, as more than 200 residents cheered. All four council members who voted for the November ordinance have since left office or resigned, and in April residents presented a petition with more than 800 signatures calling for the removal of several borough officials.

The borough has now drafted a stricter 26-page data center ordinance that would, among other things, remove the noise exemption for backup generators. It will not apply retroactively to projects already filed such as Project North, though any project that is denied or withdrawn would have to meet it if it came back. Council must first vote to advertise the ordinance for a public hearing before adopting it, and Project North's own land development approvals also rest with the Archbald borough council.