A collection of data centers spanning five separate sites in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, has been denied planning permission.

Officials in Upper Merion Township, part of Montgomery County, have rejected the plans, put forward by developer MLP Ventures.

If approved, the data centers, at five locations in the King of Prussia area, would have spanned a combined 4.6 million sq ft (427,350 sqm).

But the Upper Merion Board of Supervisors rejected the scheme at a meeting last week, saying the application lacked detail on the data centers and information on community impact.

Residents flooded the meeting to oppose the data center, according to a report in Philadelphia Business Journal, while a petition against the project has garnered just under 18,000 signatures.

MLP’s Brian O’Neill told reporters the company intends to appeal the decision. MLP is also pursuing a 2 million sq ft (185,805 sqm) data center project in PA’s Plymouth Township, at the site of the former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill in Conshohocken. DCD reported last year that Cleveland-Cliffs was looking to sell vacant factories to data center operators.

A decision on the Plymouth Township scheme, which also faced significant community pushback, is expected later this year.

The planning decision comes after the Governor of Pennsylvania this week signed an executive order setting strict requirements on data center developments in the state.