"I think everybody's here because they come to the Poconos to be near nature, not near warehouses or data centers." A Tobyhanna Township resident named Mark Lippi said that at a packed zoning meeting earlier this year, and he wasn't speaking in the abstract. He was talking about 520 acres in the same township that contains Blakeslee, land that was zoned Rural Residential right up until it wasn't.
If you're pricing a cabin, a lake lot, or an investment property anywhere in the Blakeslee area right now, you're underwriting against a zoning map. That map just proved it can move faster than most buyers assume.
What Rural Residential Was Supposed to Guarantee
Tobyhanna Township is the municipality that actually contains Blakeslee, along with Pocono Pines, Pocono Lake, Pocono Summit, and more than twenty private developments including Lake Naomi, Arrowhead Lake, Emerald Lakes, and Locust Lake Village. Rural Residential, or RR, is the zoning designation that covers most of the undeveloped and low-density land threaded between those communities. It's the zoning a buyer points to when they want reassurance that the woods behind their lot, or the parcel across the road, will stay woods.
That reassurance has a limit, and the limit is called an overlay ordinance. An overlay doesn't rezone a parcel outright. It sits on top of the existing zoning and adds a new permitted use, in this case data center development, without changing the underlying RR designation on paper. To a resident driving past, the zoning map still says Rural Residential. To the landowner and the township, it now also says data center.
The Ordinance That Did It
On December 15, 2025, the Tobyhanna Township Board of Supervisors adopted Ordinance No. 580, creating a Data Center Overlay District and adding data center use as a permitted use within it. The land it applies to is the former Tarheel Quarry site along Caughbaugh Road, off Route 115, a 520-acre property bordering the Lehigh River and surrounded by conservation land and wetlands. The owner, Pennsylvania Glacial Till LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company, has applied to build seven data center buildings on the first 100 acres, with hundreds more acres eligible for future phases.
This was not the township's first data center overlay. Supervisors approved one for a separate site near Pocono Manor on December 11, four days earlier. The Caughbaugh Road vote made it the second in a single month.
Within thirty days of the ordinance's second public notice, as township procedure allows, a group of residents filed a validity challenge. The named applicants are Mark and Joan Lippi, Jennifer Beardsley, Dolores Ruppel, Jim Millington, the Stoddartsville Association, and Ray Laytham of 293 Scenic Drive in Blakeslee, PA 18610. A grassroots group formed around the fight calls itself Tobyhanna Township Residents Against Caughbaugh Road Data Center. Their argument, laid out in the filing, is that Ordinance 580 amounts to unlawful spot zoning, that it contradicts the stated purpose of the RR district, and that it exists for the specific benefit of one landowner rather than the public.
A Fight That Hasn't Actually Resolved
Here's the part that matters for anyone pricing a purchase this fall. The challenge has not been decided. It has been continued, repeatedly, for months.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| December 15, 2025 | Board of Supervisors adopts Ordinance No. 580 |
| March 11, 2026 | Zoning Hearing Board holds first public hearing, at Pocono Summit Volunteer Fire Company |
| April 16, 2026 | Hearing continued at Kalahari Resorts and Conventions in Pocono Manor, drawing roughly 200 residents |
| June 22, 2026 | Hearing continued again, same venue |
Eight months after adoption, the matter is still open. That's not a criticism of anyone's process. It's a fact about how long a validity challenge takes to work through a township zoning hearing board, and it means a buyer closing on a nearby parcel today is closing during an active dispute, not after one.
What "Spot Zoning" Actually Has to Prove
Spot zoning is a specific legal claim, not a general complaint about unwelcome development. To win, the challengers need the Zoning Hearing Board to find that the ordinance singles out one parcel for treatment inconsistent with the surrounding district and the township's own comprehensive plan, and that it primarily benefits a private landowner rather than serving a public purpose. Township supervisors, for their part, can point to the fact that Pennsylvania municipalities are generally required to provide some zoning pathway for data centers somewhere within their borders. The question the board has to answer isn't whether a data center belongs in Tobyhanna Township at all. It's whether this specific 520 acres, in this specific district, is where the law allows it to go.
That's a narrower question than "is this good for the community," and it's the reason these challenges are genuinely uncertain rather than a formality on the way to reversal. Residents can win the argument in the room and still lose the ruling.
Why This Isn't Just a Caughbaugh Road Story
Blakeslee's own private communities sit inside the same township, under the same board, and the same RR designation covers plenty of land near them too. Buyers who assume that a lake community's surrounding acreage is permanently protected by its current zoning label are making the same assumption Caughbaugh Road neighbors made before December 15.
This also isn't the township's first stretch of contested land-use governance. Tobyhanna Township spent 2024 and early 2025 fighting over a short-term rental cap, a resolution the board adopted on a 3 to 2 vote in March 2024 and then rescinded on another 3 to 2 vote almost exactly a year later. Two different land-use fights, two different boards' worth of public pressure, two outcomes that took months to settle and could have gone the other way. If you're underwriting a property in this township, whether for personal use or as a rental, the pattern worth noticing isn't the specific rule. It's how often the rules here get contested, reversed, or amended after the fact.
Before You Write an Offer Near Blakeslee
- Ask what zoning district the seller's parcel sits in, and then ask what districts border it. RR next to RR is not the same guarantee it used to be.
- Check whether any nearby parcel has an active overlay ordinance or a pending Zoning Hearing Board challenge before you assume the surrounding land is static.
- If you're buying for short-term rental income, factor in that guest experience depends partly on what gets built within view or earshot over the holding period, not just what's there on closing day.
- Recognize that a validity challenge in progress means the zoning question is legally unsettled, not resolved in either direction.
A Few Quick Answers
Does this affect Brier Crest Woods, Greenwood Acres, or other named communities near Blakeslee directly? Not the physical footprint of the overlay itself, which sits along Caughbaugh Road. What it affects is the assumption that RR zoning elsewhere in the township is a fixed guarantee rather than a designation that can be amended by ordinance.
What happens if the residents' challenge fails? The overlay stands, and Pennsylvania Glacial Till LLC can proceed with the seven buildings already proposed on the first 100 acres, with the remaining acreage available for future phases.
Is this common elsewhere in Pennsylvania, or is Tobyhanna Township unusual? Data center overlay fights have surfaced in other Pennsylvania townships this year as well, driven partly by state requirements that municipalities provide some zoning pathway for the use. Tobyhanna Township's version is notable for approving two such overlays within days of each other in December 2025.
If you're weighing a purchase near Blakeslee and want a read on what's actually settled versus what's still being litigated, Live Free Listings tracks these local zoning and township questions as part of every underwriting conversation. Schedule a free investment review and revenue estimate before you write an offer, not after.
