April 1, 2026

The Chadds Ford Planning Commission on Tuesday made recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on one application and one ordinance. In addition, the commission accepted the resignation of its now former member, Tom Bradley. The ordinance concerns data centers and the application involves 1720 Wilmington Pike, the location of the former Bil Bunch Auction House.

Commission Chairman announced Bradley’s resignation after the meeting started late because of a prolonged executive session. In a three-page letter, Bradley said he’s stepping down from the commission for several reasons.

Among those reasons are the manner in which Calvary Chapel has displayed “flagrant and repetitive abuse of both the Chadds Ford zoning ordinances, sound ordinances, light pollution ordinances, the Chadds Ford Planning Commission itself, the Board of Supervisors and most all their own immediate neighbors.”

He also referenced the supervisors’ approval of Calvary’s request for its Sizzlin’ Summer events, without placing any conditions on Calvary.

Another reason was the township’s purchase and maintenance of Painter’s Folley, which he referred to as a “white elephant.”

Bradley also cited the school board’s inability to properly handle the costs associated with the proposed middle school project.

The proposed data center ordinance defines data centers as “Any facility, building, or portion thereof specifically designed or used to house a high density of computer servers, data storage devices, and related networking equipment for processing, storing, or transmitting digital data.”

Data centers would be restricted to the LI-1 Zoning District. Solicitor Mike Maddren said the only property fitting that description would be Potts Meadow, which is owned by the Brandywine Conservancy.

The entire ordinance is 46 pages long and is currently on the township website at https://www.chaddsfordpa.gov/media/6726.

At issue are concerns about electricity use and pollution. The pollution concerns center around PFAS, or polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are referred to as “forever chemicals.” Many of them can pose health and environmental concerns because they are persistent organic pollutants.

The ordinance requires the owners of data centers to monitor for PFAS contamination every 10 years, and “Results shall be submitted to the township within 60 days of completion. Any detected contamination shall trigger immediate remediation at the owner’s expense and an increase in the bond amount to cover the additional estimated cleanup costs, as determined by the Township Engineer.”

In addition, the owners are required to fund a collection of samples following any fire event.

The ordinance calls for a minimum location of 25 acres, and the centers shall not be taller than 40 feet and shall be subject to conditional use approval.

Planning Commission members voted to recommend that the supervisors hold a hearing on the data center ordinance and enact it. Supervisors are expected to hear the issue at their April 8 meeting, according to Supervisors’ Chairman Timotha Trigg.

The application that the commission recommended involves the former property of the Bill Bunch Auction House at 1720 Wilmington Pike, at the corner of Route 202 and Hillman Drive. The group, called 1720 Wilmington Pike Group, wants to construct a 20,000 square foot veterinary hospital and a 3,400 square foot bank on the site.

There was a long discussion involving loading zones and parking. As for the loading zone issue, solicitor Mike Maddren said he had discussed the matter with engineer Mike Schneider, who said the loading zones were part of the land development ordinances and not needed for zoning.

The parking issue was also a simple fix. Peter Miller, from the group, suggested changing the parking requirements from one space for every 75 square feet for a bank to one space for every 200 square feet. This would be applicable for banks only. That change would make 17 parking spaces required for the bank instead of 45.

Huffman called the 45-parking space required for a bank “ridiculous.”

“The world changes at a very fast rate,” Huffman said. “With online banking, with drive-through banking, it just doesn’t make sense to require that number of spaces. If you have six employees, how many times are you going to have 10 customers in the bank?”

He added that there would be other parking spaces available in the shared parking area with the veterinary hospital, where there are 60 parking spaces at any given time, and people could just walk a little farther to get to the bank. He went on to say the 17 spaces are a reasonable number for a bank.

Huffman motioned that they amend the ordinance for bank parking spaces, and the measure passed. This is not a final recommendation for the plan in its entirety but only applies to the parking requirements for banks. The plan still needs a final recommendation from the Planning Commission when it goes to land development.