Newark's fees on data center hit $577,000
- The grassroots Newark Residents Against the Power Plant%2C raised %2430%2C000 to help fight the proposal
- The company claimed it would employ 240 full-time workers.
Newark has spent more than $577,000 on legal and consulting fees related to the data-center proposal ultimately rejected by the University of Delaware in July, officials say.
The bulk of the billing was for legal counsel provided by Max Walton and other attorneys at the firm Connolly Gallagher, totaling $509,324 since October 2013, according to city Finance Director Lou Vitola.
This year, the city also has paid $53,959 to the Dover firm of Prickett Jones & Elliott, counsel for the Newark Board of Adjustment in an appeal of a city ruling on the project's zoning; and $14,270 to Liberty Environmental Inc., retained by the city to evaluate The Data Centers LLC's air-quality permit application.
Those totals don't account for the hundreds of hours of work that City Solicitor Bruce Herron and Newark staff spent evaluating, researching and responding to questions and Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the plans, which included a 279-megawatt power plant on old Chrysler assembly plant site.
"There's definitely people in the city who aren't happy that we spent a half a million, but we had to follow the legal process," Councilman Stu Markham said.
"Residents asked us to see the whole picture and to look at everything – all the legal angles. Would I like to have the money back? Absolutely. Would I have liked to have a project that was well-vetted and ready to go? Absolutely. But you need to protect the city, that's what the residents expect us to do."
TDC's design included more than 280,000 square feet of floor space to house cabinets of computer servers and other hardware. The associated gas-fired cogeneration plant would have repurposed waste heat to drive cooling and other systems to provide off-grid power. The company claimed it would employ 240 full-time workers.
The University of Delaware terminated its 75-year lease with TDC after an internal working group said the complex wouldn't be a good fit for the former factory site, now UD's Science Technology & Advanced Research Campus.
TDC has disputed the university's right to terminate its lease for the reasons stated. In the meantime, the parties to the zoning appeal pending before the Delaware Superior Court agreed in August to stay the case for 12 months.
A spokeswoman for the university said it would not disclose expenses related to its evaluation of TDC's plans because they did not include public funds.
Project opponents, organized by the grassroots Newark Residents Against the Power Plant, raised $30,000 to help fight the proposal, chairwoman Jen Wallace said.
So far, the group has spent about $14,000 on legal fees, open-records charges, and marketing materials such as lawn signs, door hangers, mailers and photocopies, Wallace said. Leaders are waiting to see what happens with the appeal before determining what to do with the remaining funds, she said.
At a recent City Council meeting, resident and UD physics professor John Morgan wondered whether a portion of the city's legal expenses could have been avoided had city administrators been more transparent during early discussions about the project with City Council and legal counsel.
Contact Melissa Nann Burke at (302) 324-2329, mburke@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @nannburke.