UPPER MERION TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA · DATA CENTERS
Archive item · Events of August 13 – September 18, 2026
What happened: Upper Merion supervisors unanimously denied all five land development plans for Brian O’Neill’s proposed AI data center campus near King of Prussia on Thursday, August 13, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Erin McCarthy reported. On September 17, O’Neill appealed in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.
Claim: O’Neill said the campus would support more than 10,000 construction jobs, generate more than $55 million a year in local taxes and run on a closed-loop system needing no outside water.
Check: Those were the developer’s projections. The township’s tax collector disputed the economic figures at the hearing, and supervisors said key plan details arrived too late in the process. We found no independent analysis confirming the numbers.
Concern: Residents raised pollution, noise, light, electricity costs and property values; a petition drew about 18,000 signatures. Supervisor William Jenaway accused the developer’s team of trying to bully township staff, a characterization O’Neill’s side has not accepted.
Outcome: Denied, now in court. O’Neill’s appeal argues the township once told him a data center qualified as a permitted warehouse use and then reversed course. He asks a judge to grant preliminary approval and appoint an independent referee. The township declined to comment pending review.
Location Decision takeaway
A zoning officer’s letter is not a land-use approval, but it can become the center of a lawsuit. Communities that issue informal use determinations for new building types should expect them to be tested, and developers should expect big projections to be challenged without a third-party study behind them.
Original reporting: Erin McCarthy, Philadelphia Inquirer, August 13, 2026. Follow-up: Erin McCarthy, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 18, 2026.
About this item: Contested Ground items are sourced and written by AI from the credited reporting and public records linked above, following Location Decision’s editorial standards. We publish them to track disputes over what America builds and to inform Location Decision’s broader editorial analysis. They are not independent reporting by our staff.