Residents Fight $5 Billion Maysville Data Center Plan
maysville residents packed Bangor Area Middle School on Thursday night and told developers they would fight the proposed Lower Mount Bethel Tech Center until the end. The more than $5 billion project has become a fight over 450 acres of rural land, not just a data center proposal.
450 Acres in Lower Mount Bethel
The Lower Mount Bethel Tech Center is described as a 1.2-gigawatt data center planned for a 450-acre site. Developers said the project could bring 500 full-time jobs, hundreds of construction positions, and between $7 million and $8 million in annual tax revenue for the township.
Those figures explain why the proposal drew a packed room. They also show why the meeting mattered to residents who see the site as farmland first and a development site second. The town hall was organized by Peron Development and J.G. Petrucci Co., the project’s major stakeholders.
Public Comment Rejects Project
About three dozen people spoke during public comment, and none backed the proposal. Several speakers rejected the idea that farmland is empty land waiting for a more profitable use, turning the meeting into a direct challenge to the project’s premise.
The developers did not explain how many buildings the campus would include, and they did not say how large the buildings would be or how they would be laid out across the property. There is also no confirmed end-user for the facility, leaving the project’s final footprint and customer still unresolved as opposition hardens around the site plan.
Farmland, Tax Revenue, Control
The dispute now reaches beyond the town hall floor. Residents framed the project as a test of farmland use, local control, and whether Lower Mount Bethel Township should remain rural even as developers promise jobs and tax revenue.
For people living near the 450-acre site, the immediate next step is clear: the debate has moved from a proposal on paper to organized public resistance in a room full of residents who see the land as farmland, not vacant acreage. The project’s unanswered design details and missing end-user keep the plan from looking fixed, even as the opposition is already organized.
