The owner of properties in Penn Forest Township where a data center is proposed has notified the township’s zoning hearing board of a “substantive validity challenge” to a section of the township’s zoning ordinance.

In a document obtained by the Times News through the Right to Know law, Mele Brothers Realty of Glenside, through its attorney, Nicole M. Ellis, Esq., asks the zoning hearing board to determine the challenge has merit, that the township’s ordinance is invalid and unconstitutional for excluding data centers within the jurisdictional limits of the township, and that Mele Brothers should be granted site-specific relief.

Mele submitted the challenged pursuant to the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, which states “a landowner who, on substantive grounds, desires to challenge the validity of an ordinance or map or any provision thereof which prohibits or restricts the use or development of land in which he has an interest shall submit the challenge to the zoning hearing board.”

The challenge contends that while data centers are a lawful and legitimate land use in the commonwealth, that use is not permitted as a conditional or special exception use in the Penn Forest area in question, which is a R-2 Low-Density Residential Zoning District, but “a municipality may not totally exclude a lawful, legitimate use from its borders.”

Mele argues the remedy for a total exclusion of a legitimate use is to allow the use somewhere in the municipality.

The paperwork says as a successful challenger to the substantive validity of the zoning ordinance, Mele “is entitled to construct, operate, and maintain a data center on the property.”

Accompanying documents show Mele Brothers previously purchased properties for over $2,000,000 in the area of the Maury Road in the township, the district in question.

They include land bought from 1400 Market St. LLC, for $512,000; George D. Hiller, $240,000; Apollo Associates, $228,000; Brian K. and Sherry M. Waselus $360,000; and the Estate of Ursula C. Getz, Dolores Sywensky and Joyce Jackson, $700,000.

A hearing on the matter will be held at 6 p.m. March 23 at Penn’s Peak.