Donald Hyman has lived at the Southeastern Veterans’ Center in Spring City for more than a year. Located around 30 miles from his former home in Philadelphia, the assisted-living community provides a serene setting along the Schuylkill River. Hyman earned his place there by serving as a U.S. military cook from 1982-88.

But now Hyman fears that peace — and his health — will be jeopardized by plans to build an AI data center the size of more than 20 football fields across the street.

The property is the former site of Pennhurst State School and Hospital, which shut down in the 1980s due to the mistreatment of patients and has since become a Halloween attraction. The landowner — Pennhurst Holdings, LLC, whose principal is real estate developer Derek Strine — submitted an application in October, proposing to convert the site into a 1.3 million square-foot AI data center campus.

The project would bring in millions of dollars of annual tax revenue to the town and create 200 permanent jobs and 1,000 construction jobs, Matt McHugh, the attorney for Pennhurst Properties, said in a December Board of Supervisors meeting. The campus would have six buildings, an electric substation and solar field.

The proposal has been met with vehement pushback by local residents, with hundreds of people attending East Vincent Township meetings to give several hours of feedback. Residents have raised concerns about the impacts on noise, traffic, water availability, utility rates and public health — with some arguing that the plan puts profit over the lives of taxpayers.

One concern that is unique to East Vincent involves the effects the data center could have on residents of the Southeastern Veterans’ Center, who live 551 feet away from the proposed site, and the potential contaminants that construction could dig up from the grounds.

“Veterans really took a lot. We’ve seen a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t have seen,” Hyman told the Local last month. “We really feel disrespected, like you’re not taking us into consideration. That’s how we feel.”

Sitting with his fellow veterans at a November board of supervisors meeting, Hyman said he’s worried that pollution from the data center would halt his recovery from congestive heart failure, and liver and kidney issues. AI data centers emit PM2.5 and nitrogen oxides into the air, which are linked to asthma, lung cancer, and other health outcomes. Next to him, veteran Steve Becker voiced concerns that the nonstop constant noise from the data center would hurt veterans recovering from PTSD as well as wildlife.

Multiple hyperscale data centers have been proposed in the Schuylkill River region over the past year, as Gov. Josh Shapiro champions AI infrastructure growth in Pennsylvania.

A plan to build a 1.4 million square-foot center in Limerick, near the Limerick Generation Station nuclear power plant, was revealed at a township meeting on Jan. 8. Constellation Energy, which owns the nuclear plant, has proposed a 2 million-square-foot center in East Coventry. The township rejected its request for rezoning to build the center. A plan to build a data center in Plymouth Township was withdrawn last fall after a legal issue halted a township meeting.

Christine McNeil, president of the group East Vincent Advocacy and a former East Vincent Township supervisor, is concerned that these data centers will collectively strain the Schuylkill River and other resources in the region. Large-scale data centers consume as much as five million gallons of water a day to keep cool.

The county and regional officials should conduct a “regional cumulative impact review” before township officials make any further approvals, McNeil said.

“This level of industrial intensity raises significant concerns not just for one municipality, but for the entire region,” she told the Local.

The Pennhurst data center

The Pennhurst State School and Hospital opened in 1908 as a treatment hospital for individuals with intellectual and development disabilities. It closed in 1987 after legal challenges to its abuse of residents, and it became the Halloween attraction, Pennhurst Asylum, in 2008. Several of the 32 buildings remain.

Strine’s Pennhurst Holdings, LLC, acquired the property by taking over a $7.5 million mortgage on the land from an affiliate of Beal Bank, founded by Texas billionaire Andrew Bank, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2017. Strine and his brother own the Delaware-based property management company Investors Realty Inc.

East Vincent officials have agreed that a data center would be allowed under the current zoning, which permits industrial and mixed-use buildings.

The plan includes a “closed loop” cooling system that would use rainwater, not groundwater that could impact residents’ wells, as well as noise reduction measures and an onsite substation owned by PECO, McHugh said at the Dec. 3 board of supervisors meeting.

Over the past few months, East Vincent officials drafted a new zoning ordinance that would impose restrictions on data center development. But the Board of Supervisors decided not to move forward with it at its Dec. 17 meeting. Township solicitor Joe Clement explained that adopting the new ordinance could result in a legal challenge with Pennhurst Holdings, which already has filed one against the township’s current zoning. The board’s decision did not prevent residents from further condemning the data center.

For now, East Vincent will move forward with a months-long process to review the project. It will come before the Board of Supervisors for a conditional-use hearing, where members will vote on the use of the property. The board must sit in a “quasi-judicial capacity,” meaning members must act as judges and cannot express their views on the data center, Clement explained.

“I have to keep an open mind to this,” the board’s chairman, Craig Damon, told residents at the Dec. 17 meeting. “If everyone feels they know how I feel on [the project], that’s not the case. That’s not true for anybody up here.”

The hearing will take place in late March, at the earliest. The application also must undergo a land development process before the planning commission and seek permits from different agencies, Clement said. All these procedures could result in a multi-year process, he said.

Building on a brownfield

One question that residents have raised in township meetings is whether the Pennhurst site is safe to build on, with a few claiming the grounds contain hazardous contaminants like asbestos and coal ash.

In the case of an AI data center, Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance requested in a public letter that the whole campus be surveyed for human remains using ground-penetrating radar. If discovered, the remains should be moved to a site to be determined out of respect for the deceased, the alliance said.

“We will not oppose the demolition of some, many, or most of the property’s buildings for other uses, under certain conditions,” the advocacy organization’s letter reads.

Strine received a $10 million grant-and-loan package in 2017 to redevelop and remove environmental hazards on the property. He also wanted to prepare the site for a “large distribution facility,” renovate existing buildings and complete other changes, according to the grant application.

The funds were administered through the Chester County Economic Development Council (CCEDC) and provided by the state’s Commonwealth Financing Authority. The CCEDC and Pennhurst partnered with the firm Pennoni, whose vice president is East Vincent Township engineer Mike Kissinger. Pennhurst Properties is no longer a client of Kissinger’s firm.

In addition to asbestos removal, Pennhurst conducted environmental assessments under the state’s Phase I and Phase II programs, and the levels of the contaminants found in the grounds didn’t exceed state health standards, Bellevue Communications Group, a public relations firm representing Pennhurst Holdings, said in an email. The spokesperson said Pennhurst investigated the “entire site.”

Pennhurst then “remediated” all buildings and some tunnels, before they were demolished. Several buildings remain but are set to be demolished “at a future date,” the email reads.

Bellevue Communications Group said “all asbestos has been identified, properly contained, removed, and disposed of per PA standards.” Records from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) say asbestos abatement was completed in 22 Pennhurst buildings and some tunnels between 2018-2024.

State Sen. Katie Muth (D-Chester/Montgomery/Berks), an East Vincent resident, said the site is still overdue for a thorough environmental assessment. A coal-fired power plant was demolished on the property in 2024 and Muth said people can still find hazardous coal ash on the grounds. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes coal as radioactive.

The Pennhurst property is also listed as an active brownfield site under Act 2, a voluntary state program that governs the environmental cleanup of former industrial sites, a DEP spokesperson told the Local. Brownfields are previously used sites that are potentially contaminated.

In 2020, Pennhurst failed the environmental assessment for Act 2 due to data gaps and other technical deficiencies, and never followed up with an improved report, DEP confirmed to the Local.

Bellevue said Pennhurst Holdings is reapplying for Act 2 clearance. When asked why the site remains a brownfield after a $10 million redevelopment project, Bellevue said the purpose of the funds wasn’t to fully remediate it to a greenfield state.

“The site is zoned for industrial use, and the stated purpose of the remediation is to return the site for industrial use with utilities including sewer, water, high voltage electrical, and all necessary stormwater management structures in place,” the email reads.

Muth told the Board of Supervisors in a letter last October that the brownfield status contradicts township staffers’ claims that the property “has been cleaned up.” She said the township should have stricter environmental safeguards for data center development. Officials can reject the data center project under the Municipal Planning Code, which mandates the protection of public health and safety, she said.

The code “says the health, welfare and safety of the public,” Muth told the Local. “They have to ensure that. Does that always happen in Pennsylvania? No. But do they have the legal authority and obligation? Yes.”