West Emaus Avenue Data Center (Quantm Group), Allentown, Pennsylvania

Quantm Group wants to turn a vacant 224,000-square-foot warehouse at 2401 West Emaus Avenue in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, into an 80-megawatt data center with a 23,000-square-foot addition. The Allentown Planning Commission reviewed Quantm's revised plan on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and reached no verdict, and a zoning appeal about the project set for the zoning hearing board on August 31 was postponed with no new date. The Allentown Planning Commission decides the land development plan, and the zoning appeal is still waiting for a hearing date before the zoning hearing board.

The revised plan moves an electrical substation from the Emaus Avenue frontage to the south side of the property, adds sound walls around mechanical equipment and more landscaping, and lists 66 employees and 32 backup generators. Quantm says it will use 42 rooftop chillers with a closed-loop cooling system, which its attorney Anthony Maras said it would accept as a deed restriction, and 35-foot sound walls to stay within the city's limits of 57 decibels by day and 52 at night. Maras said PPL had indicated the project would not raise rates for other customers, and he has put the data center's tax revenue at about $4 million a year.

About three dozen residents spoke at a special evening meeting of the planning commission on July 16, raising noise, water and electricity use and utility costs. "I am very concerned about our community. I want to be somewhere where we can live and thrive," resident Alexx Knight said. City planners have questioned how few jobs the data center would bring to an area the city has designated a major employment hub, and its fit with neighbors such as Camelot for Children, a nonprofit for children with special needs, and the Wynnewood Greens housing complex.

Allentown City Council adopted data center standards in June 2026 covering water and electricity use, noise and environmental studies, but they do not apply here because Quantm filed before the council took up the issue. Council is now working on a change to the city's noise ordinance aimed at the continuous hum of data centers, which would cover the Quantm site and every other property in the city.