Blakely Data Center Campus, Blakely, Pennsylvania

Developers Jim Marzolino and Alpesh Patel withdrew their request to rezone land in Blakely, a borough near Scranton in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, for the Blakely data center campus on September 12, 2025, three days before the borough council was to consider it. They had planned a four-building data center campus on 209 acres near Terrace Drive and Business Route 6, each building about 70 feet tall and roughly 150,000 square feet.

The campus would have needed an estimated 1.5 gigawatts, equal to the total output of the nearby gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center, and up to 300,000 gallons a day from the town's water supply, according to borough manager Christopher Paone. The site sits behind the Assembly of God Church on the Scranton/Carbondale Highway; Patel owns about 44 acres of it and companies tied to Marzolino about 77.

The first public meeting in August 2025 overflowed, with dozens of people in the parking lot. About 300 people came in person to a council meeting in a town of fewer than 7,000 residents, and another 200 watched online, Paone said. "The immediate response was, 'No,'" Paone said. "They did not want it." The developers' lawyer, Michael Mey, said the request was withdrawn after borough officials declined to schedule another information meeting where revised plans could be shown; Paone said the developers had a formal hearing with sworn testimony available to them and more than three weeks to prepare.

Blakely then wrote its own rules. On November 17, 2025, the borough council unanimously approved a new zoning overlay for data centers, requiring large setbacks, environmental studies, emergency plans, strict generator rules, DEP permitting and road impact studies, with the borough allowed on site for inspections at least four times a year. The potential site under the overlay sits behind West Mountain Road, near about 30 homes. "We went around with the petition to all 30 homes that this will affect and we have everybody but one house on the signature", said neighbor Charles Gudaitis. Blakely distributes its own electricity, so any data center there would have to buy power from the borough.

About a dozen data centers are proposed across Lackawanna County, according to a citizen-run tracker cited by the Bay Journal. Blakely has received no new data center proposals since adopting its rules, and Paone said he is fine with that. "Would I like an extra four, five, six, ten million dollars in my budget every year? Absolutely," he said. "But [if it means] this type of possible detriment to the town? No, it wasn't worth it." Any new proposal would go through the overlay and the Blakely Borough Council.