The developers of a data center in Blakely, Pennsylvania, have withdrawn their rezoning request.

Blakely is a borough located in the vicinity of Scranton, a city in Lackawanna County, eastern Pennsylvania.

A statement by lawyer and proposer Michael Mey on September 12 stated that the request had been withdrawn “after borough officials declined to schedule an additional public informational meeting where revised development options could be presented.”

The request called for a land parcel located behind the Assembly of God Church on the Scranton/Carbondale Highway to be rezoned for a possible data center development.

The parcel totals approximately 121 acres, with businessman Alpesh Patel owning about 44 acres and a pair of real estate companies, both of which are affiliated with businessman Jim Marzolino, owning around 77. Plans for the campus indicated that it would have offered up to 1.5GW of capacity.

The statement was issued three days before the Blakely Borough Council Meeting on September 15, which is when the rezoning request would have been considered.

The developers stated that the borough had refused to hold a forum for further discussion after revisions were made to the original development plan in response to public backlash. Vocal opposition at a public information session held by Marzolino on August 13 led the developers to push the meeting back to September 15.

But Borough Manager Chris Paone rejected that characterization, telling The Times-Tribune that officials did not deem a second information session to be necessary.

In Paone’s words, a separate forum had been established for the developers to “present anything they would want to present under oath and have official public comment,” that they had rescheduled the original hearing, and that postponing the hearing would have incurred extra expenses for the borough.

“They had more than three weeks to come up with their proposal so that they could present it to the borough, to council, to the residents, at a public forum that is a formal hearing with a court stenographer, sworn testimony, where council can make a decision.”

Most of Pennsylvania's data centers are located in either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Operators in the state include Iron Mountain, EdgeConneX, Ark, DataBank, Equinix, and 365 Data Centers, among others.