Olyphant Borough Council is set to vote Thursday, Nov. 5, on a proposed $101 million settlement with ERCOR Triboro LLC, a deal that would end a lawsuit over a sprawling data center project but also sidestep the public hearings residents were counting on to weigh in. The vote comes eight days after Broadstone Net Lease reported in a quarterly filing that it had invested more than $154 million in the project, and just months after the borough changed its own zoning rules to require exactly the kind of hearings this settlement would skip.
According to the Scranton Times-Tribune, council will meet Thursday, Nov. 5, at 6 p.m. in the Regal Room at 214 Lackawanna Ave. to consider settling ERCOR's lawsuit and approving a community benefits agreement alongside it. The proposal would have ERCOR pay Olyphant $101 million over 15 years — a huge sum for a borough whose annual municipal budget runs under $5 million, per the same report. In exchange, the agreement would let the company avoid the public hearings tied to the borough's conditional-use process, though residents can still address council before the vote itself.
How the Money Would Flow
The settlement breaks the $101 million into several streams. Olyphant would receive $416,667.67 every month for 15 years, totaling $5 million annually, the Times-Tribune reported. On top of that, the borough would collect $1.25 million for each data-center building permit it issues and $1.5 million for each occupancy permit — plus a separate $1.25 million tied to the substation building permit and another $1.5 million within 30 days after the substation receives power, since ERCOR plans to build the substation first. Monthly payments would begin 30 days after that first permit is issued.
When the substation permit is granted, Olyphant would also receive $1.5 million for a first-responders fund, $500,000 for police station upgrades, $1.5 million for infrastructure and $500,000 for parks, according to the newspaper's account. A separate community energy and school tax fund would give homeowners up to $1,500 toward Mid Valley School District property taxes, fully covering any bill under that amount — though the district itself would get no additional money from the agreement beyond those resident contributions.
What ERCOR Wants to Build
Project Triboro calls for seven 80-foot-tall data centers and a substation spread across 470.61 acres of industrially zoned land, consuming an estimated 1 gigawatt of electricity — roughly 1,000 megawatts. ERCOR Triboro LLC, based in Victor, New York, sued Olyphant on June 22 with a mandamus complaint asking a judge to force the borough and its zoning officer to issue a permit. The company's lawsuit argues that a March 2022 final land-development approval for warehouses on the site grants vested rights to build data centers under the zoning rules that existed before the borough tightened them.
Olyphant responded on Aug. 28, disputing ERCOR's arguments and asking the court to dismiss the case outright, the Times-Tribune reported. That came months after council amended its zoning ordinance in April to regulate data centers as conditional uses within the roughly 1,000-acre CM-2 zone — a process that, under normal circumstances, would require ERCOR to present evidence at public hearings proving its project complies.
Residents Push Back Against Skipping Hearings
That loss of public process is exactly what has organizers like Eva Rappenglueck alarmed. Rappenglueck, who has lived in Olyphant for five years while raising a 5-year-old daughter, is a founding member of Stop Olyphant Data Centers. Natalia Berjashi, another resident opposing the deal, said the settlement sells out the town and deprives residents of hearings where they could cross-examine witnesses and present evidence — rights that affected residents and their attorneys would otherwise be entitled to seek as recognized parties in a conditional-use proceeding.
Former councilman Bill Gaughan went further, calling the settlement abhorrent and unconscionable and criticizing it for sidestepping public scrutiny and residents' participation. Berjashi, Rappenglueck and Gaughan all said they hope for a large turnout at Thursday's meeting. Borough solicitor John Brazil has defended the deal, saying it requires more than the existing ordinance would and benefits residents, and noting that tentative settlement talks began after the June lawsuit and intensified over the following two months.
Noise, Generators and Environmental Terms
Beyond the cash, the agreement spells out environmental conditions. ERCOR has committed to closed-loop cooling systems and to enclosing backup generators in a building to dampen sound, with generator testing limited to 30 minutes once a month. Per Brazil and borough engineer Lou Lafratte, the company must comply with commercial noise limits of 65 decibels by day and 60 decibels at night at the campus property line, and testing would include checks for low-frequency sound. Olyphant would retain the right to require a sound study for each completed data center and to conduct its own studies.
The project would use generators, and any battery energy storage systems would require a fire-suppression system. Project Triboro could ultimately rely on roughly 333 to 400 generators ranging from 2.5 to 3 megawatts apiece, and any battery energy storage systems would require a fire-suppression system. The project is expected to require substantial electricity.
How Olyphant's Deal Stacks Up
Olyphant's proposed $101 million is well above many comparable Pennsylvania arrangements. In Cumberland County, the PAX-1 project offered Middlesex Township $14 million in community-benefit payments on top of normal property taxes, structured as six roughly $2.3 million installments tied to construction milestones, according to PennLive. Swatara Township's agreement with Corscale Data Centers, by contrast, is larger still — totaling more than $120 million, with payment milestones and funding for several categories, as reported by GovTech.
Spotlight PA has reported that a formal benefit agreement in Lancaster requires developers to use only clean energy, hire locally, file annual reports and pay $20 million into community development funds — a more structured approach than the cash-heavy deals seen elsewhere. The outlet also notes that in the absence of comprehensive federal regulation, local officials are largely left to negotiate these agreements with developers on their own, town by town, with wildly varying terms and oversight.
Project Triboro's roots trace back to land Sansone Group bought from DeNaples for $80 million last year. Olyphant settled a separate lawsuit with DeNaples in June by affirming its April zoning vote, and a related effort, Triboro Commerce Park, had previously proposed and then withdrew an application to build seven data centers on the west half of the same site. Broadstone Net Lease did not respond to an emailed request for comment by 5 p.m. Friday, according to the Times-Tribune. Council members Jimmy Baldan and Robert Hudak both declined to comment ahead of Thursday's vote.
