South Annville Township is heading into what could be its most charged public meeting in years, as supervisors prepare to vote Wednesday on a zoning change that could open the door to a $1.7 billion data center complex on nearly 100 acres along Mount Pleasant Road. In just the last month, packed public meetings and roadside protests have turned this quiet Lebanon County valley into a full-blown fight over growth, farmland and quality of life. With supervisors holding the final say on rezoning, their next vote will decide whether the proposal advances to conditional‑use and land‑development reviews.
What’s proposed
The petition comes from 1235 Martina Drive Owner LLC, a joint venture between Inch & Co. and Eastern Land & Resources Company, and asks the township to rezone roughly 99 acres to allow a campus of five data‑center buildings. Developers have outlined a phased plan that includes on‑site electrical infrastructure, a potential substation, a realignment of Mount Pleasant Road and stormwater controls, and they say the full buildout could be worth about $1.7 billion. Those planning details were laid out in reporting by LebTown.
Neighbors push back
Tens of residents have been turning out for planning meetings and staging demonstrations along Route 422, telling officials they believe the campus would bring round‑the‑clock noise, heavy truck traffic and a permanent loss of local farmland. A county briefing earlier in April drew dozens of people who warned the project could drag down property values and strain emergency and utility services. Coverage has documented protests and packed public comment sessions near the proposed site earlier in May, as reported by Lebanon Daily News.
Money and jobs
Developers say the campus would create roughly 100 permanent jobs and generate millions of dollars in annual tax revenue, figures they have highlighted in presentations to township and county officials. Local reporting and company materials list those estimates at about $13 million a year for the Annville‑Cleona School District, roughly $3 million for Lebanon County and about $750,000 for the township. By the district’s published numbers, which show an operating budget of roughly $34.3 million, that school share would equal roughly four tenths of the district’s annual budget, according to regional reporting by Bob 94.9 / WHP580.
Environment, water and noise concerns
Residents and local experts have flagged a long list of potential impacts, including heavy water use, low‑frequency noise from cooling systems and generators, and local sinkhole risk tied to groundwater and runoff. Developers have proposed mitigation measures such as using treated effluent from a nearby sewage plant for cooling, building screening berms and other landscaping, and upgrading stormwater controls. Those mitigation proposals, and the health and environmental questions they raise, were detailed in local reporting by LebTown.
What happens next
The South Annville Township Board of Supervisors is scheduled to debate the requested zoning map amendment at a meeting on Wednesday, May 13, with the hearing set for the Annville‑Cleona Secondary School auditorium. If supervisors adopt the amendment, the developer would still need conditional‑use and land‑development approvals before any construction could begin, and supervisors hold the immediate power to accept or deny the rezoning request. FOX43 reported that the planning commission recently weighed in against recommending the zoning change, while township materials outline the permitting steps and local process on the South Annville Township website.
Bottom line
The proposed campus now appears in industry trackers as a major new entry in the region’s surging data‑center pipeline, and it crystallizes the tradeoffs many smaller Pennsylvania communities face between big‑ticket investment and preserving farmland and local services. With a supervisors vote set for Wednesday, the next 24 to 48 hours will show whether local opposition and regulatory scrutiny can reshape or stall a project pitched as a windfall for school and municipal coffers. The proposal is also catalogued by industry sites such as DataCenterMap.
