Project dossier · Plymouth Township (Montgomery County), Pennsylvania

900 Conshohocken Road data center (former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill) Awaiting decision

900 Conshohocken Road LLC, an entity of developer Brian O'Neill, seeks a special exception from Plymouth Township's zoning hearing board to convert the recently closed Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill — 10 existing buildings totaling about 2 million sq ft on 66 acres along the Schuylkill River — into a data center. The Aug. 6 hearing nearly filled a 750-seat auditorium; Conshohocken Borough was granted party status while Norristown was denied. The board set a procedural-only session for Aug. 17, with testimony continuing in September; an opposition petition has topped 4,000 signatures.

Key facts

Owner: Brian O'Neill (developer)
Filing LLC: 900 Conshohocken Road LLC
Size: 66 ac
Location: Plymouth Township (Montgomery County), Pennsylvania
Hearing: 2026-08-17
Stage today: Awaiting decision

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Heard 2026-08-17; decision pending. Call the board clerk for the vote date and get on the notification list.

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What has happened so far (10 events)

2025-10-01vote
The Plymouth Township Planning Agency voted 4-0 not to recommend a special exception to allow a data center at 900 Conshohocken Road. · source
2025-10-20protest
A resident petition opposing the proposal had reached more than 400 signatures, led by Patricia Smith, citing environmental, proximity, and utility-cost concerns; the article noted the Cleveland-Cliffs mill was scheduled to close the following month. · source
2025-11-17withdrawal
A zoning hearing ended abruptly Monday night when the developer withdrew its application; the township solicitor said the applicant lacked legal standing because the agreement of sale had not been finalized. · source
2026-05-01filing
Plymouth Township announced it had received a resubmitted zoning application from an entity tied to developer Brian O'Neill seeking a special exception for a data center in the Heavy Industrial district at 900 Conshohocken Road. · source
2026-06-08announcement
Plymouth Township Council issued a formal statement setting out its perspective on the proposed 900 Conshohocken Road data center and the zoning proceedings, and noted the public hearing set for June 25 at Colonial Middle School. · source
2026-06-25hearing
The zoning hearing kicked off at Colonial Middle School focused on procedural matters; party status was granted to Plymouth Township, the property owner's representatives, nearby residents, and the Borough of Conshohocken Authority, with no testimony taken. · source
2026-07-27coverage
Council Chair Lynne Viscio accused developer Brian O'Neill of bullying, saying the township would not be bullied or intimidated; O'Neill called the accusations a 'bold-faced lie,' and he challenged the validity of the township's zoning ordinance. · source
2026-08-06hearing
Zoning hearing board session at Colonial Middle School drew a nearly full 750-seat auditorium; the applicant's engineer began testimony comparing the data center to permitted heavy-industrial uses, and party-status requests from neighboring municipalities and residents were taken up. · source
2026-08-06hearing
At the Zoning Hearing Board session, residents booed and cursed as a witness testified data centers resemble manufacturing; the board rejected several legal motions filed by opponents and indicated it would continue the case in September. · source
2026-08-17hearing
Hearing continued to Aug. 17 for procedural matters only, with no witness testimony; further testimony to be scheduled. · 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 Plymouth Township (Montgomery 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 Plymouth Township (Montgomery 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 40.110, -75.290 — 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.

Around here

Pennsylvania briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in Pennsylvania

King of Prussia campus (MLP Ventures) — Upper Merion Township (Montgomery County), 5 mi Denied
Pennhurst Data Center Campus — East Vincent Township (Chester County), 16 mi Denied
Project Forge Data Center — East Whiteland Township (Chester County), 16 mi In review
PECO - Limerick Distribution Project — East Coventry / Lower Pottsgrove / Limerick Townships (Chester / Montgomery County), 18 mi In review
AWS Falls Township campus (Keystone Trade Center) — Falls Township (Bucks County), 27 mi Approved

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “900 Conshohocken Road data center (former Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/plymouth-township-conshohocken-road-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).