The deal
On January 15, 2026, an entity called Carlisle Development Partners -- a joint venture between Pennsylvania Data Center Partners and PowerHouse Data Centers -- signed a $14.1 million agreement with Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. The agreement secured rights to the township's public water and sewer systems for the developer's 18-building data center campus, codenamed Pennsylvania Digital I (also referred to as PAX).
The water volume committed under the deal: 400,000 gallons per day. According to local reporting, that is more than 40 percent of the township's excess water supply -- the buffer between current consumption and the township's capacity. Middlesex Township is small. The data center is not.
On March 4, 2026, the 450 megawatt substation that will power the first phase of the project was approved. First power is expected in the second quarter of 2027. The plans for the 18-building campus had already been approved by the township in January.
All of this happened in roughly seventy days, between early January and early March 2026. The tenant -- the actual company that will use the 400,000 gallons of water per day and the 1.35 gigawatts of power -- has not been named.
What $14 million actually buys
The most useful sentence in any reporting on this project came from Phil Neiderer, a Middlesex Township supervisor, speaking to The Real News in February. Asked what the township would do with the $14.1 million payment, Neiderer answered:
"What that's going to do is it's going to fund a lot of projects that have already been in the books that are completely unrelated to the data center."
It is worth slowing down on that sentence. The township is not adding water capacity with the money. The township is not building reserves for a dry summer with the money. The township is using the money to backfill the budget for projects already on the books -- roads, equipment, general operations -- that the township was going to fund anyway, presumably out of property taxes and existing revenue.
The data center will get the water. The water leaves the township and is consumed at the campus. The general fund gets the check. Two separate ledgers, deliberately not connected. This is the same money-fungibility pattern we documented in De Soto, Kansas, where the city authorized up to $50 billion in tax-exempt spending and the developer's actual minimum commitment was $700 million. The mechanism is different (here, a one-time payment for water rights; in Kansas, an Industrial Revenue Bond ceiling), but the structural sleight-of-hand is the same: the project gets a real, irreversible resource; the community gets a paper benefit pegged to expenditures it was already making.
The project at scale
The eighteen-building campus will sit on 700 acres along Country Club Road, roughly five miles northeast of Carlisle. The headline numbers, sourced from the developers' own public statements and a Globe Newswire press release issued at the joint-venture launch in July 2025:
- $15 billion in total project investment - 1.35 gigawatts of base power capacity, expandable to 1.8 GW - 30,000 peak construction jobs (developer projection) - 270 permanent operating positions (developer projection) - More than $65 million in direct tax revenue (developer projection) - $37.5 billion in total economic impact "over the project life" (developer projection)
The permanent-jobs number, 270, is what to look at most carefully. In Pennsylvania, a manufacturing facility that committed $15 billion of capital expenditure and 700 acres of land would normally produce thousands of operating jobs. A hyperscale data center produces a few hundred. The buildings exist to house servers, not workers. This is the standard data-center labor profile -- and the reason the standard objection to data-center subsidy stacks is that the per-job public cost is enormous compared to traditional industrial development.
The Globe Newswire release confirmed the joint-venture structure: PowerHouse Data Centers (the developer; CEO Doug Fleit) and Pennsylvania Data Center Partners (the operator; CEO Igal J. Feibush). Carlisle Development Partners is the special-purpose vehicle for the site itself.
The undisclosed tenant
Pennsylvania Digital I has been described in reporting and developer materials as a hyperscale-class campus serving "major hyperscale clients." No specific company has been named. The lead tenant -- the entity that will actually use the 400,000 gallons of water per day and the 1.35 gigawatts of power -- has not been disclosed in any public document we have reviewed.
This is the same secret-tenant pattern visible in Project Laurel (Limerick, Pennsylvania), Project Pilot (De Soto, Kansas), and Project Marvel (Bessemer, Alabama). In all four projects, residents are being asked to approve significant local commitments -- water, electricity, tax abatements, zoning -- for a company they are not told the name of. In all four, the developer is a Delaware-organized special-purpose entity. In all four, the public's first opportunity to register an objection happens after the financial structure has already been negotiated.
The Globe Newswire release for the JV launch, issued July 15, 2025, is referenced as a source on this project's dossier page. Anyone who can identify the lead tenant from its language or its capacity profile is welcome to send a tip.
What to watch
1. The first dry summer. Middlesex Township's 400,000 gallons-per-day commitment is a per-day figure, every day, in perpetuity once the data center is operational. The township's water system has a buffer today. It does not necessarily have one in a 2027 drought year.
2. The Q2 2027 first-power milestone. The 450 megawatt substation is approved. Phase 1-b construction is unblocked. Anyone in Middlesex Township or the surrounding area who has not yet seen substation work begin should expect it shortly.
3. Ratepayer pass-through. New transmission infrastructure built to serve hyperscale data centers is, in many states, charged back to all electricity customers in the region rather than only to the hyperscale customer. Residents of the PJM Interconnection territory (which includes Pennsylvania) should watch how the cost of the substation and any associated transmission upgrades is allocated in the next rate case.
4. The lead tenant naming. By Q2 2027, when first power is delivered, somebody is going to start running servers in those buildings. We will know the tenant by then if not earlier. The capacity profile (1.35 GW expandable to 1.8 GW) and the location are consistent with several of the usual hyperscale suspects.
5. The next deal. Pennsylvania Digital I is named "I" deliberately. There is presumably a Pennsylvania Digital II in the same developer's pipeline, somewhere in the same region, on a similar economic structure. The first deal sets the template; the second one is where local opposition tends to consolidate.
We track this project on the map and on its dedicated dossier page. If you live in Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, or anywhere in the PJM Interconnection region and you have evidence about the project's tenant, financing, or environmental review, send a tip. The receipts are what make the work work.