The residents of a small town in Pennsylvania are currently amid a fight for their community, as data center developers have applied for permits to build six campuses within the area. The proposed data centers will be built in the town of Archbald, which has a population of just 7,000 people, and will include 51 data warehouses. The Washington Post reports that each of these data warehouses will be about the size of a Walmart Supercenter, all of which would encompass about 14% of the town’s 17-square-mile area. The Archbald town council approved zoning changes that allowed data centers back in 2023, but some of the people in the town of 7,000 have started pushing back on these developments when they started applying for permits in 2025.
Archbald used to be at the epicenter of coal mining and transportation in the area. However, it has since turned into a quiet town with the decline of the coal industry in the early 1900s, which is why many were surprised by the developers’ interest in putting up data centers in the area.
