Prime Data Centers — Starpointe Business Park campus Awaiting decision
Prime Data Centers filed a conditional-use application in May 2026 for a seven-building, ~1.7 million sq ft data center campus with an attached behind-the-meter 450 MW gas-fired power plant on roughly 126 acres of reclaimed strip-mine land in the Starpointe Business Park (land owned by ALTIAN Development LLC), near the Pavilion at Starlake. The Aug. 5 conditional-use hearing drew 200+ residents; about three dozen won party status, and residents' attorneys argued the application belongs before the zoning hearing board rather than the supervisors, so the hearing was continued to Aug. 31 without Prime presenting.
Key facts
- Operator
- Prime Data Centers
- Filing LLC
- Prime Data Centers LLC
- Size
- 450 MW
- Acres
- 126
- Location
- Hanover Township (Washington County), Pennsylvania
- Hearing
- 2026-08-31
- Stage today
- Awaiting decision
Source
read 2026-08-14
What to do next
Next step: Heard 2026-08-31; decision pending. Call the board clerk for the vote date and get on the notification list.
What has happened so far (5 events)
- undatedfiling
Prime Data Centers LLC filed a conditional-use application in May 2026 for a seven-building data center with an attached power generation facility in the Starpointe Business Park. · source - 2026-03-01rezoning
Hanover Township adopted an ordinance regulating data center development during a meeting in March 2026, before Prime Data Centers LLC submitted its Starpointe application. · source - 2026-07-27coverage
CBS Pittsburgh reported that residents were mounting an 11th-hour fight against the proposed Starpointe data center ahead of the Aug. 5 hearing, citing health concerns from infrasound, noise and emissions and criticizing the township's data center ordinance as insufficiently protective on setbacks and noise. · source - 2026-08-05hearing
Conditional-use hearing before Hanover Township supervisors drew hundreds of residents; roughly three dozen were granted party standing, and residents' attorneys argued the zoning hearing board must first determine the data center's comparable use, so the hearing was continued to Aug. 31. · source - 2026-08-31hearing
Continued conditional-use hearing scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Hanover VFD Firehall. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Pennsylvania DEPThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- DEP Data Center Permit Tracker (the only state register built for data centers — it already feeds this tracker)Searchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Hanover Township (Washington County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Hanover Township (Washington County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 40.350, -80.440 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Recent news
- Hanover Township Committee introduce ordinance curbing data centers
- Data Centers Come Into Focus at Hanover Township Committee Meeting
- East Hanover Township passes data center ordinance
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 3 headlines archived.
Around here
- Pennsylvania briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Pennsylvania
- Zediker Station Data Center — South Strabane Township (Washington County), 19 mi Rumored
- Unnamed Data Center — Midland Borough (Beaver County), 22 mi Rumored
- Pittsburgh International Race Complex Data Center — Big Beaver Borough (Beaver County), 35 mi In review
- Springdale Data Center — Springdale Borough (Allegheny County), 37 mi In review
- Keystone Connect — Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), 44 mi In review
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Prime Data Centers — Starpointe Business Park campus”, aigridwatch.com/projects/hanover-township-starpointe-pa, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).