Amazon's 1,300-Acre Data Center Plan Has United Republicans and Democrats Against It in Rural Pennsylvania

NorthPoint Development's plan for a 1,300-acre data center campus in Luzerne County has pulled together a coalition rarely seen in rural Pennsylvania politics: registered Republicans and Democrats standing against the same project. The proposal, known locally as Project Hazelnut, would span Hazle and Sugarloaf townships near the Poconos and, according to planning records that have surfaced locally, is being built to serve Amazon's cloud computing operations.

About 4,500 people live in the two townships next to the proposed site, and many have organized under a group called the Alliance to Stop the Line, which has filed roughly 20 formal protests against the project and the high-voltage transmission corridor needed to power it. That power line alone threatens to put close to 30 properties under eminent domain, a prospect that has drawn as much anger as the data center itself. NorthPoint has offered $10,000 payments to residents along the route, an overture that so far has done little to quiet the opposition.

Governor Josh Shapiro announced Project Hazelnut in November 2024 as part of a push to fast-track data center permitting in the state, and Amazon followed in July 2025 with a pledge to invest $20 billion across Pennsylvania. State filings put the Hazle Township project's own price tag at $165 million. By August 2026, though, Shapiro had reversed course, signing an executive order that hands local governments more say over siting and permitting after warning that unchecked data center growth was straining the power grid.

Not everyone in Harrisburg agrees with the pullback. Stacy Garrity, the Republican running for governor, has kept her pro-data-center position, while Democratic state Senator Katie Muth has introduced a bill that would impose a statewide moratorium on new facilities. The split means the fight over Project Hazelnut, and the roughly 174 data centers already operating somewhere in Pennsylvania, could shape next year's governor's race in ways that cut across the usual party lines.

The Luzerne County fight is part of a national pattern. Tracking groups counted more than 75 data center projects worth upward of $130 billion delayed or canceled in the first three months of 2026 alone, as the number of local opposition groups nearly doubled, from 396 to 833, over the same stretch. National polling has found about 70% of Americans oppose data centers being built in their own communities, with majorities in both parties: 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans raising objections. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, once one of the industry's loudest boosters, has also moved to rein in new approvals, suggesting the backlash NorthPoint is facing in rural Pennsylvania is less an isolated local dispute than an early sign of where voters in both parties may be heading.