Second Planned Lancaster City Data Center Facing Residents’ Appeal
Lancaster city residents are challenging the recent approval of a second data center at 216 Greenfield Road to the city zoning hearing board, but an experienced zoning lawyer says the board may not have authority to uphold the appeal.
The citizens’ group Lancaster Residents Against Glut and Exhaust (RAGE) recently appealed the city planning commission’s decision to grant conditional preliminary approval for a second data center planned on the site.
The group argues that the vote was also a zoning determination that the data center is “wholesale trade and storage” and can be appealed to the Lancaster City Zoning Hearing Board.
“The public still has not been given the rights guaranteed to them by the Municipalities Planning Code to have their day in their zoning hearing board – the most local, quasi-judicial form of government where these issues are adjudicated,” said city resident Tony Dastra, who submitted the appeal on behalf of Lancaster RAGE.
Dastra said he’s been told by city officials that the case will be on the agenda for the zoning hearing board’s September meeting set for Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. at City Hall.
City communications manager Amber Strazzo Righter said Friday that Dastra met the filing deadline for the September hearing, but the agenda has yet to be finalized. She declined to comment further on the case.
Lancaster RAGE, which is not currently represented by a lawyer, listed 25 members on its application, many living within one half mile of the Greenfield Road site. Dastra said more have joined since it was filed.
The development team led by Chirisa Technology Parks still needs the commission’s final land development approval for the second data center building at 216 Greenfield Road. The first is already under construction, and was approved without a land development plan because it used the footprint of an existing industrial building. Chirisa also plans to build a third data center in the city at 1375 Harrisburg Pike.
A representative for the developer declined to say whether they will intervene in Lancaster RAGE’s appeal, and said that the planned data centers have all necessary zoning approvals in place.
“The use is expressly permitted and the appeal has no merit,” Chirisa managing director David Kelly said.
Marc D. Jonas, co-chair of the land use and zoning practice group at the suburban Philadelphia law firm Eastburn and Gray, told LNP | LancasterOnline that under state law, land development appeals must go to the county Court of Common Pleas, not the zoning hearing board.
Jonas, who has more than 50 years’ experience in land use and zoning law, said the board must schedule a hearing on any appeal application within 60 days of receiving it. But in Lancaster RAGE’s case, he expects the board to rule that they lack the authority to decide on the appeal.
“I would say ‘we’re going to convene, we’re going to have a hearing on this, and we’d like you to be prepared to argue whether this board has jurisdiction,” he said.
The case isn’t the first time residents have attempted to appeal the “wholesale trade and storage” classification, which appeared in letters sent from the city zoning officer to the developer in February 2025.
Last August, city resident Frank Arcoleo asked the zoning hearing board to hold a hearing on the “administrative zoning decision” regarding the properties. The board set a hearing date in the case, but the developer sued to block it from going forward. A judge ruled in favor of the developer, writing that the case that the letters weren’t zoning determinations, even though the zoning officer included the phrase “I have made the determination.”
Jonas said zoning determinations are a “fuzzy” area of the law because they are an informal way for a landowner to find out whether they need to ask for zoning hearing board approval. The law doesn’t have any requirement to notify the public or give them the opportunity to object, he said.
“These determinations were not appealable events for an objector,” he said.
Dastra is running for governor as a Green Party candidate, but told LNP | LancasterOnline this week that his name is not expected to appear on the ballot due to a court challenge that argued he did not gather enough valid signatures. He has made data center opposition a key issue in his campaign.
This story was originally published in LNP Lancaster Online, an online publication based in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on August 21, 2026. The article is reposted on our website, with their permission. Click here for a direct link to the article: Second planned Lancaster city data center facing residents’ appeal | Local News | lancasteronline.com.