Developers behind a plan to turn nearly 86,000 square feet of vacant space at the former Coventry Mall into a data center have pulled their application, marking the second such proposal to collapse in North Coventry Township this year. The withdrawal came after the township's zoning officer rejected the legal argument developers were using to justify the project under existing commercial zoning rules.
PGOB Coventry Holdings LLC and PennMark Management Company Inc. filed the application on August 13, seeking a special exception that would have allowed the data center at 351 W. Schuylkill Road, home to the shopping center now known as the Shoppes at Coventry. According to MyChesCo, the developers argued under Section 370-21.B(2)(e) of the township's zoning code that a commercial data center qualified as a “public service facility” permitted in the C-1 Commercial District.
Township Zoning Officer Cheryl Franckowiak rejected that premise, ruling the proposed use did not qualify as a permitted public service utility in the district, according to the seed facts underlying this report. That determination led attorney Craig R. Lewis to send a formal withdrawal letter to Franckowiak dated October 6, canceling the Zoning Hearing Board meeting that had been scheduled for October 22, as BUCKSCO.Today reported.
A Second Data Center Plan Dies in North Coventry
This isn't the township's first brush with the data center boom. In February, North Coventry's Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to reject an informal proposal from Envision Land Use for a 120,000-square-foot, three-story “boutique” data center planned on a roughly 17-acre site near a PECO electrical substation east of Route 100, according to North Coventry Township. That proposal never advanced to a formal application before supervisors turned it down.
The mall itself has a long retail history that helps explain why its owners turned to data centers in the first place. The 53-acre property first opened as the open-air Norco Mall in October 1967 before being enclosed in 1974, and in recent years it has lost major anchors including Kohl's, Dick's Sporting Goods and Joann Fabric, leaving Boscov's as its sole remaining traditional department store. PennMark Management Company Inc., based in Plymouth Meeting, bought the property in April 2016 from U.S. Bank National Association, which had acquired the distressed mall at auction for $49.5 million in 2013, and rebranded it as the Shoppes at Coventry.
Township Races to Finish Its Own Rulebook
With developer interest in the site clearly not going away, North Coventry Township has been working on its own regulatory framework. In September, the township introduced a 14-page draft ordinance that would classify data centers as a distinct conditional use, requiring closed-loop cooling systems, a 1,500-foot setback from property lines, groundwater monitoring, and strict rules on backup generators, according to the Suburban Realtors Alliance. More than 50 residents attended the presentation of that draft, per the seed reporting on the meeting. If supervisors adopt the ordinance before another mall proposal resurfaces, it would govern any future attempt to site a data center there.
The township's path to writing its own rules has been bumpier than it might appear. In June, supervisors declined to enact a 180-day moratorium on data center applications, instead relying on a multi-municipal regional planning compact that shielded member towns from having to zone for data centers as long as another member municipality already permitted them, the Suburban Realtors Alliance reported. That reliance on shared regional protection came apart the following month.
Regional Planning Pact Fractures Over Secret Study
In May, neighboring Douglass Township voted unanimously to begin withdrawing from the eight-municipality Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Committee after learning that North Coventry had quietly commissioned a study evaluating 250 acres in Douglass for potential data center development without consulting Douglass officials, according to reporting from the time. That rupture in the 21-year-old regional compact put the shared zoning protections North Coventry had been counting on at risk, though they remained in place during Douglass Township’s transition period.
The fight over the mall's vacant square footage is unfolding against a shifting statewide backdrop. Governor Josh Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05, establishing different permit-review treatment depending on whether developers commit to GRID requirements, according to the Pennsylvania Governor's Office.
The withdrawal closes out this particular application, but it does not resolve the underlying tension between a mall struggling to fill vacant anchor space and a township trying to finish protective zoning before the next proposal lands. The draft ordinance would not apply to the commercially zoned mall property.
