The Proposal, in Plain English
A 2-million-square-foot data center inside ten former steel-mill buildings, with on-site natural-gas turbines as the primary power source, sitting 66 acres along the Schuylkill River, less than 200 feet from homes in the Connaughtown neighborhood.
What 900 Conshohocken Road, LLC is asking for
The site at 900 Conshohocken Road sits in Plymouth Township’s Heavy Industrial (HI) zoning district. Data centers are not a listed use in the HI district under Zoning Ordinance No. 342.
Rather than ask Plymouth Township Council to amend the zoning ordinance, which would require a public legislative process, the applicant is asking the Zoning Hearing Board for a special exception under Article XV, Section 1502.J, the “similar use” provision. The legal theory: that a data center is “consistent with and of the same general character” as a laboratory or a warehouse.
What O’Neill says is in the plan
These are the points the developer has put on the record, in the May 2026 zoning application, in October 2025 testimony, and in the Inquirer, WHYY, and MoreThanTheCurve. We are presenting them faithfully so we can examine them honestly.
The footprint
- 66-acre former Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant
- Ten existing buildings, ~1,000,000 sq ft footprint
- Buildings to be modified to two floors → ~2,000,000 sq ft of data center space
- Less than one mile from downtown Conshohocken
- Adjacent to Connaughtown homes, the Proving Grounds, Tee’s Golf Center, the Schuylkill River Trail
Power source
- On-site natural-gas turbines as primary power
- Stated to not draw from the grid for primary load
- Outdoor stand-by (backup) generators
- “Ancillary” gas turbines located within and between the existing buildings
- Backup generators able to export to the PJM grid during peak demand
Water
- Described as a “closed-loop” cooling system
- Application states the data center “will not draw water from the adjacent Schuylkill River nor from on-site wells”
- No public information on volume, source, or makeup water
The tenant
- Not named, citing confidentiality
- Described publicly only as “life sciences-related”
- O’Neill’s parent firm, MLP Ventures, advertises “Infrastructure as a Service”: biopharma data centers at scale
The legal theory
- Data centers are similar to laboratories, warehouses, and manufacturing, all permitted by right in HI
- The application argues that data centers “manufacture raw data into finished informational products”
- Argues environmental controls and security infrastructure are similar to permitted uses
The promised tax revenue
- $21 million per year claimed at October 2025 hearing
- $15.67M to Colonial School District
- $3.38M to Montgomery County
- $1.76M to Plymouth Township
- At least one Planning Agency member disputed these numbers on the record
What is conspicuously missing
The Inquirer, WHYY, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Plymouth Township’s own Planning Agency have all flagged the same gaps. Each of these is a question the Zoning Hearing Board should answer before any approval, with independent, third-party analysis.
What the application says
- “Closed-loop” water
- “Will not draw from the Schuylkill or on-site wells”
- On-site gas turbines for primary power
- Backup generators “federally regulated”
- $21M in annual tax revenue
- Tenant is “life sciences-related”
What the application does NOT say
- Where the closed-loop water comes from initially, and how much makeup water per day
- Who the water utility partner is, and whether an NDA shields disclosure
- How many megawatts the facility will consume, period
- What volume of natural gas the on-site turbines will burn, daily and annually
- NOx, PM 2.5, formaldehyde, and CO emission projections at maximum permitted operations
- Independent dispersion modeling showing impact on Connaughtown air quality
- 1/3-octave low-frequency noise measurements at the nearest residential property line
- Independent fiscal-impact study validating the tax revenue claim
- The actual end user or any way for the township to assess off-site impacts without it
The water question
A “closed-loop” system still requires water. It is closed only in the sense that water is recirculated; it must be filled, topped up to replace evaporative loss, and periodically blown down. The relevant numbers for similar facilities are large.
What we are demanding
- Total daily water demand, in gallons, at maximum permitted operations, with engineering assumptions disclosed.
- Source identified. If municipal water, which utility? With what contract? Aqua Pennsylvania? Philadelphia? PA-American? If groundwater, which aquifer and what permit?
- DEP Chapter 110 registration disclosure. Any source averaging more than 10,000 gpd in a 30-day period must be registered. Any withdrawal greater than 100,000 gpd falls under Delaware River Basin Commission jurisdiction.
- Brownfield contamination plan. Alan Wood Steel discharged industrial wastewater to the Schuylkill for over a century. The DRBC docketed an Outfall 1.2 mgd discharge through 2012. The closed-loop system must demonstrate that contaminated groundwater is not part of the source water and that retrofit construction will not mobilize legacy contaminants.
- NDA prohibition. The Township should refuse any application where the water source agreement is shielded by a non-disclosure agreement.
Sources: PA DEP 25 Pa. Code Chapter 110; Delaware River Basin Commission jurisdictional thresholds; EESI water-use briefing; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2024 data-center water study.
The power question
“Bring your own gas” sounds like it gets the project off the grid. It does not get it out of our air, and it does not get it out of our regional capacity market.
The on-site combustion problem
O’Neill has stated the facility will generate its own electricity from natural-gas turbines on site. He has not disclosed:
- The total nameplate megawatts
- The number, model, and emissions tier of the turbines
- The volume of natural gas consumed per day, per year
- The pipeline source and whether new pipeline infrastructure is required
- The Title V air permit threshold analysis
Combustion turbines “within and between” the buildings, less than 200 feet from homes, is not a routine warehouse use. The dispersion of NOx, PM, CO, and formaldehyde matters and is not captured in a simple statement that emissions are “federally regulated.”
The grid-cost problem
Even if the data center self-generates, it lives inside the PJM regional grid. PJM’s 2025-2026 capacity auction cleared at roughly 9× the prior year’s price. The Independent Market Monitor attributed 63% of that increase to data centers and quantified the additional ratepayer cost at $9.3 billion.
NRDC projects an average household bill increase of ~$70/month by 2028 across PJM. PECO has signaled additional rate adjustments tied to capacity in 2026.
And: the application itself contemplates that the on-site backup generators can export to the grid during peak demand. That is a generation interconnection. Plymouth Township residents are entitled to know what that interconnection looks like.
What we are demanding
- A binding statement of total megawatts and total annual fuel use.
- An emissions-tier commitment: Tier IV diesel backup generators or better, with hospital-grade muffler standards.
- Air dispersion modeling at maximum permitted operations, evaluated by an independent expert paid by the developer but selected by the township.
- Full disclosure of any PJM interconnection inquiry filed for the site.
- A condition that no expansion of natural-gas pipeline infrastructure into the site occur without a separate public hearing.
Sources: PJM 2025-2026 Base Residual Auction results; Monitoring Analytics IMM filings; NRDC analysis; IEEFA capacity-price report; Caltech 2025 health-burden modeling.
The mysterious tenant
O’Neill has refused to identify the operator who would run the facility, citing confidentiality. The Inquirer reported that the tenant has been described as “life sciences-related”, a description that fits MLP Ventures’ own “Infrastructure as a Service” line, which it describes as “power-secured, data centers at scale” tied to its biopharma campus in King of Prussia.
Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro’s own GRID standards explicitly require “strict transparency standards and direct community engagement” for data center development. If the operator cannot be named, the township cannot meaningfully assess off-site impacts from compute load, to cooling demand, to chemical inventories, to security setbacks. Anonymity is a transparency objection, not a confidentiality interest.