The applicant's study for the Plymouth steel mill data center puts construction at $3.81 billion and 4,976 direct jobs a year

What the study prices

Construction is $3.47 billion, and $2.64 billion of owner equipment stays out of the jobs model

4ward Planning writes that it estimated the costs by scaling the documented cost of a comparable large data center, about $10.1 million per megawatt of critical IT load, to the project's 640 megawatts. It then split the total in the same proportions as the comparable facility. Soft and hard construction is the largest piece at $3.47 billion, followed by $288 million of site work and $49.6 million of development costs.

The other $2.64 billion is owner equipment: generators, uninterruptible power supplies and power distribution units. The study expects that equipment to be made and bought out of state, so it leaves it out of the local jobs model. The $3.81 billion that remains is what the study feeds into IMPLAN, an input-output model that estimates how spending in one industry passes to its suppliers and to the households of the workers it pays. All figures are in 2026 dollars.

The jobs estimate

4,976 direct jobs a year become 7,683 in Montgomery County with suppliers and household spending

The study's 4,976 direct jobs are an annual average over the three construction years, and IMPLAN counts a full-time and a part-time job the same way. Adding 906 jobs at suppliers and 1,801 supported by workers' household spending brings the Montgomery County total to 7,683 a year. Across Montgomery and six neighboring Pennsylvania counties the study counts 8,801.

For scale

The study's 4,976 direct jobs equal about 8.5% of the region's 58,600 construction jobs in 2025

For scale, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted an average of 58,600 jobs in mining, logging and construction in the Montgomery-Bucks-Chester metropolitan division in 2025, the highest annual average since the series began in 1990. The division added 8,700 of those jobs between 2015 and 2025. The study's 4,976 direct jobs equal about 8.5% of the 2025 average. For more on that series, see construction jobs, housing permits and materials prices for Montgomery County.

What would be built

The August study uses 1,954,710 square feet of data center space, the April application about 2,000,000

The filings describe the buildout in different terms. The April application says ten existing buildings with about 1,000,000 square feet could take a second floor, for about 2,000,000 square feet of data center space. Its redevelopment plan shows seven data center buildings and a central utility plant, with standby generators inside and outside the buildings, gas turbines within and between them, and closed-loop cooling. The August study uses 1,954,710 square feet. The July site plans show a smaller building footprint, 150,000 square feet of office space and 1,928 parking spaces.

Where the approvals stand

Council listed 43 conditions, and condition 34 asks for prevailing wage and apprenticeships

The site is in the township's Heavy Industrial district, which does not list data centers. The applicant asks for a special exception, a use the zoning board can allow after a hearing, under section 1502.J, which covers uses of the same general character as a permitted use. On July 21 it also filed a substantive validity challenge, a claim that the ordinance unlawfully excludes a legitimate use. That petition asks in the alternative for relief from building height and coverage limits, parking ratios, steep slope and natural resource standards, and the township's noise limits.

Council's July 27 statement lists 43 conditions it presented to the applicant and says the applicant rejected them. Several bear on construction, and condition 34 asks for a local hiring plan, prevailing wage and benefit rates, and registered apprenticeship programs in site preparation and construction.