A former coke coal plant near Buffalo, New York, could be replaced with a data center development.

As reported by local press, including Buffalo News and BizNews, the owners of the Riverview Innovation and Technology Campus site in Tonawanda, Erie County, have put forward plans for a new data center development at the property.

The 140-acre campus, at 3875 and 3800 River Road, formerly the Tonawanda Coke Corp. plant, could be home to a 300MW, 500,000 sq ft (46,450 sqm) data center development, according to plans put before the Town of Tonawanda planning board.

Tonawanda Coke Corporation (TCC) and its predecessors had operated a coke manufacturing facility at this location since 1978, while the property has been used for coke manufacturing since 1917. Once owned by Honeywell (formerly Allied Chemical), the plant closed around 2018 after TCC’s bankruptcy, with some 60 coke ovens shutting down. Demolition and cleanup work commenced in the interim years and is still ongoing.

Developers Jon Williams and John Yensan acquired the site in 2019 at auction for $1 with the only bid, renaming the site the Riverview Innovation and Technology Campus and outlining potential future plans for industrial use, including potentially as a data center development.

Ontario Specialty Contracting, the environmental remediation firm led by Williams and Yensan, is handling the cleanup of the coke plant.

Construction on the data center could happen concurrently with the environmental cleanup — breaking ground late this year and finishing the project by the end of 2027.

Williams and Yensan told BJ they have teamed up with an unnamed data center developer for the project, but has yet to name the company. Up to $2 billion could be invested in the project.

“Two weeks ago, the owner of the Riverview Innovative [sic] and Technology Campus presented their plans for the redevelopment of the former Tonawanda Coke site,” the Town of Tonawanda said in a Facebook post last week. “This will include plans on both sides of River Road, including the waterfront side.”

The Clean Air Coalition of WNY is against the project, and is urging local officials to instead use the site for renewable power generation and storage.

“We have a lot of concerns about a proposed data center at the former Tonawanda Coke site – but the top line issue that we really want to emphasize is that residents in Tonawanda want to see a Just Transition,” the coalition said. “They do not want to see a data center there, and they want instead to see the River Road industrial corridor as a whole utilized for unionized renewable power generation and storage.”