In order to help residents understand how ODD the whole data center process has been in East Whiteland, I will load in documents taken off of the township website.
So back before COVID when data center stuff started being floated, it was a smaller plan. Much smaller like 78,000 square feet and it was going to have a solar field to assist self-sufficiency.
I didn’t rust that then. Why? Because the name we always hear with Green Fig the most, Charles Lyddane, was a financial services professional for decades prior to this. Research indicates he started at Xerox and moved onto financial services at Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason. Translation: that background = money driven, fees and commission driven, correct?
And then all of these Democrats think he’s wunderbar? Do they know how he ran as an endorsed Republican School Board candidate circa 2013? Allow me to quote and old Patch almost press release post as in not a regular article:
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/malvern/bp–charles-lyddane-endorsed-for-school-board
Charles Lyddane endorsed for School Board
EastWhitelandGOP,Neighbor
Posted Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 6:50 pm ET
Updated Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 9:20 pm ET
Local Republican Committees Jointly Endorse GVSD School Board Candidate Charles Lyddane
Great Valley – On March 9, 2013 Republican committee people representing Republican voters living in Great Valley’s School Board Region II (parts of Republican Areas 9 and 10) endorsed Charlie Lyddane for School Board…After an open process soliciting community input and prominently posting a notice in Malvern Patch seeking interested and qualified candidates for Great Valley School Board, the committee representing Republican voters in Region II met the candidates and caucused, endorsing Charlie Lyddane by a two -thirds vote.
According to Bill Tickner, Committee member and Willistown community leader, “Charlie Lyddane is the businessman we need to represent the Great Valley School community on the School Board. I am proud and pleased that Charlie a pro-education Great Valley parent with a strong background in finance and business development has stepped up to put those skills to work on our behalf. We need someone like Charlie who’s willing to steward scarce taxpayer resources into classroom education first..Mr. Lyddane has lived in Great Valley School District for 15 years and has graduated two children from the District. A graduate of Union College in Schenectady, NY, Mr. Lyddane has a BA in History and also attended the Business School at Union. He started his career at Xerox. He was Vice President of Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason in West Chester for 23 years. As a real estate developer and investor in Chester County for the past 9 years, Mr. Lyddane has significant experience in budget development and implementation, as well as achieving strategic goals in a timely and cost efficient manner. He also has significant experience in Property Management.
According to Mr. Lyddane, “When you are managing shareholder’s money, you must produce a product that is beneficial to those shareholders.
Boom there it is – “you must produce a product that is beneficial to those shareholders.”
That tells you what you need to know, doesn’t it? It’s not about community, or the environment or anything altruistic, just good old fashioned green backs right?
Before I go back to the data center of it all, one more article from his life before Green Fig which makes you wonder is this just like another stock pick? Is this why all of the back and forth?
https://www.wealthmanagement.com/wealth-management-industry-trends/acting-on-his-own
Acting on His Own
Some brokers almost cringe at the term “stock-picker.” It can conjure up visions of reps with frayed nerves and churned accounts.Not Charlie Lyddane.”I’m not ashamed to admit that I pick stocks,” says Lyddane, a soloist at Legg Mason in West Chester, Pa. “It’s what a broker is supposed to do. My clients like that kind of help.”Apparently so. Lyddane reports $1 million in production and $120 million
Charlie Lyddane
December 1, 2000
…Some brokers almost cringe at the term “stock-picker.” It can conjure up visions of reps with frayed nerves and churned accounts.
Not Charlie Lyddane.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I pick stocks,” says Lyddane, a soloist at Legg Mason in West Chester, Pa. “It’s what a broker is supposed to do. My clients like that kind of help.”…Apparently so. Lyddane reports $1 million in production and $120 million under management. He’s been a broker for 19 years and has never been part of a team.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to have or need a partnership,” Lyddane says. “Besides, I like doing things on my own. No one will care about my clients like I do.”
He thinks it’s wrong to hand off client service. “My clients pay to deal with me,” Lyddane says. “I craft stock portfolios of blue chips with a bent toward technology. I’m their single source, and I like being responsible.”
He is responsible – literally.
With 400 clients and 1,000 accounts, Lyddane uses discretionary account management as a time-saving technique….Although he does his own thing, Lyddane appreciates the help he gets from the firm. “Legg Mason supports a number of teams, but I’ve found them to be very supportive of what I do. I have a great arrangement.”
Anyway, the solar field idea disappeared and then they wanted these box things they called pods. Then I think those disappeared because of maybe crypto currency concerns?
I heard a while back that PECO said something like that data center would be like the second largest site next to the City of Philadelphia and if so, how crazy is that?
Someone I know wrote today:
The Limerick Nuclear plant generates about 2300 MWH (megawatt hours) of electricity per day (with two reactors) enough for 2 million homes
The new proposed data center in town is expected to use about 100-600 MWH.
Or 8% to as much as 48% of the ENTIRE OUTPUT of a single reactor. For one data center. The equivalent of 500,000 homes.
It could actually be MORE than the energy equivalent of 500,000 homes, couldn’t it be?
We have a weak and problematic power grid already – when we have outages they will be first served (residents will get pushed down the grid) and all those diesel generators right? And then you just have to wonder HOW MANY TIMES IS EAST WHITELAND GOING TO LET THIS GUY TRY TO TWEAK A PLAN THAT ALWAYS SEEMS TO HAVE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES WHICH MEANS WHY NOT AN ENTIRE NEW SUBMISSION?
When the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article about this in 2023, I was interviewed. What I said was:
I’m not against responsible development, But when you’re talking about new kinds of technology and new kinds of factories, basically, you need the most updated [municipal] codes available, and our current codes are out of date…We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The past I was in part thinking of is the lithium contamination etc. that was Foote Mineral. Foote was an EPA site. There was a review of the site in 2024, but well, the whole data center of it all wasn’t supposed to be that ginormous yet was it?
https://semspub.epa.gov/work/03/2399721.pdf
To quote the 2024 site review:
After ceasing operations in 1991, the Site owner at the time, Cyprus Foote Mineral Company, arranged for the removal of equipment and for demolition of remaining buildings down to their foundations. In 1998, Frazer Exton Development, LP (FED) purchased the original Property (Parcel 42-3-130) and assumed responsibility for cleaning up the Site. FED also installed a single cap over both the North Quarry and South Quarry as part of cleanup activities. In December 2016, Whiteland Holdings, LP (WH), the holder of the first mortgage on the Property, foreclosed and acquired the Property from FED. In a deed recorded on August 15, 2019, WH sold parcel 42-3-130.2 to Green Fig Land LLC, and on January 31, 2022, WH sold parcel 42-3-130 to Green Fig 11.33 LLC2. At the time of this FYR’s October 2023 Site inspection, the 42-3-130 and 42-3-130.2 parcel owner had, on several occasions, permitted a local electric company to use some uncapped areas of the Site as a laydown space to store lumber. The area is not in constant use. The current 42-3-130 and 42-3-130.2 parcel owner intends to redevelop parcel 42-3-130.2 as the location for a data farm facility. In 2024, construction activities for the data farm facility were initiated on parcel 42-3-130.2.
(2For clarity purposes, Green Fig Land LLC and Green Fig 11.33 LLC are owned by the same individual.)
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0301103
https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2021/08/03/new-pa-tax-exemption-development-jobs.html
Coming to Falls Township – August 2025
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/9/7080
And of course there is a sneaky bill getting fast tracked through Harrisburg as we speak. HB5121. If you google it before reading it, benignly it is described as “which aims to assist Pennsylvania municipalities in regulating data centers through a model zoning ordinance.”
BULLSHIT. This is that thing they talked about in 2025 that would remove rights from municipalities rendering them helpless in certain zoning situation. It does a band aid slither into the municipalities planning code so there is zoning on data centers. Data Centers can pop up anywhere. It arrives just in time for the Governor to announce his re-election bid. Essentially Johnny Frackenstein (AKA Governor Josh Shapiro) wants to remove local control for communities to reject this. State run and controlled everything and aren’t we experiencing enough of that at present in Washington DC in general? This is a bad bill that has data center developers and operators all wet at the prospect (sorry, yes that’s gross but true.)
Anyway, it’s up to people to turn out in East Whiteland until this thing is for the people and not at the expense of the people. And if you care, look up who is on HB 5121 and give them a ringy dingy and say WTF (just politely.)
https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb2151
Here’s the hot mess of East Whiteland. Obviously not everything, but enough to make your head spin:
(How do you have an acoustic study when something is not live in an area? Is it like those traffic studies which are you get what you pay for?)
