Amazon Web Services has formally signed on to the largest gas-powered data center project in the United States. Amazon Data Services, Inc., the company's development arm, filed a Preliminary Land Development Plan with the Indiana County planning commission on August 28 under the project name PIT100 Masterplan, laying out 36 data center buildings at the Homer City Energy Campus 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. The county planning office has posted the full application package and names AWS as the anticipated end user, confirming what Baxtel reported in August, when Amazon acknowledged it was in discussions with the developer but had no definitive agreement.
The filing
The application covers six development sites within the campus, dubbed Bruner, Helen, Green, West, Harvey/Gaston, and Rura, according to DCD, which first reported the filing on Tuesday. Amazon proposes to acquire roughly 2,200 acres across Center and Blacklick Townships, with the buildings themselves occupying about 1,100 acres, PennLive reported. Beyond the 36 buildings, the plan lists ancillary office and storage space, electrical substation infrastructure, security features, and redundant on-site generation.
Construction is scheduled to begin in December. The timetable on file shows the work running in phases for a decade, with the final phase starting in January 2032 and full completion targeted for June 2036.
The power behind the campus
The campus replaces the Homer City Generating Station, a 2 GW coal plant that ran from 1969 to mid-2023 as Pennsylvania's largest coal-fired generator. Homer City Redevelopment and EPC contractor Kiewit announced the conversion in April 2025: a 3,200-acre energy campus anchored by a 4.4 to 4.5 GW combined-cycle plant built around seven GE Vernova 7HA.02 turbines, which would be the largest gas-fired plant in the country. EQT has agreed in principle to supply Marcellus gas, first power is targeted for 2027, and Knighthead Capital Management is helping finance the project.
"This project will honor Homer City's place in the proud history of Pennsylvania energy generation, while accelerating the state and local community's ability to meet the needs of a rapidly shifting energy landscape," HCR chief executive William Wexler said when the project was announced.
Local pushback
Not everyone in Indiana County is on board. More than 100 residents packed a September 9 planning commission meeting with concerns about noise, water, and property boundaries, and commissioners tabled the application, WJAC reported. AWS told officials the campus could employ 1,500 to 2,000 permanent workers at $80,000 to $100,000 average salaries, would take power through FirstEnergy backed by the on-site plant, and would return non-contact cooling water to the station for reuse under existing withdrawal rights.
Market context
Baxtel currently tracks 33 facilities in the Pittsburgh market totaling 284 MW; the largest, Big Digital Energy's Midland site, carries 120 MW, and only one facility in the region is under construction. Baxtel's record for the Homer City campus notes 3,700 MW reserved for data centers. Built as filed, the project would multiply the region's tracked inventory several times over and anchor the $20 billion-plus Pennsylvania buildout AWS pledged in 2025, which also includes a campus beside the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Salem Township acquired from Talen Energy. For Indiana County, it would instantly become one of the largest employers and taxpayers.
Why it matters
The filing turns the country's largest behind-the-meter gas bet from a power plant in search of a customer into a defined hyperscale program with a tenant, a plan, and a calendar. For a project long doubted for lacking an anchor tenant, that is the biggest milestone since the turbines were ordered.
It also confirms where hyperscale development is heading. With interconnection queues measured in years, the industry's largest campuses will keep following power, not fiber.
