Buying Land in Indiana County, Pennsylvania

From Pennsylvania's largest coal plant to the country's largest gas-powered data center campus

The Homer City Generating Station, located at 1750 Powerplant Rd in Center Township, was once Pennsylvania's largest coal-fired power plant, with roughly 2 gigawatts of generating capacity. It was officially decommissioned on July 1, 2023, and its demolition -- including the plant's landmark chimney -- was completed by March 22, 2025. Rather than sitting idle as a stranded industrial brownfield, the site is now under active construction as the Homer City Energy Campus: a more than 3,200-acre natural-gas-powered data center campus that its developers describe as the largest such project in the country, designed to meet growing AI and high-performance computing demand.

The campus is planned around a 4.5 gigawatt natural-gas power plant -- more than double the capacity of the former coal plant it replaces -- using seven high-efficiency, hydrogen-capable GE Vernova gas turbines, with first turbine deliveries expected in 2026 and a target of beginning power production in 2027. Pennsylvania DEP has issued an air-quality permit clearing the way for construction, and Homer City Redevelopment has announced an agreement in principle with EQT Corporation to supply the natural gas for the plant. This is a large, currently active, extensively documented project, not a proposal still awaiting approval -- and its scale (more than 3,200 acres, a multi-billion-dollar power and data-center build) makes it the single most consequential current land-use event in Indiana County. See our dedicated standalone for what this means if you're evaluating land near Center Township specifically.

Marcellus shale gas: a real, ongoing industry countywide

Separate from the Homer City redevelopment, natural gas extraction from the Marcellus Shale formation is a significant and ongoing industry across Indiana County, with active well permits, production, and supporting infrastructure documented countywide. As with much of Pennsylvania's shale-gas region, this means checking a specific parcel's mineral-rights history is a genuinely practical step: oil and gas rights are commonly severed from the surface estate here, sometimes decades before shale drilling made those rights valuable, and the current mineral owner may have no connection to the current surface owner. A title search at the Indiana County Register of Wills & Recorder of Deeds is the only reliable way to confirm what's actually included with a specific parcel.

Zoning and records

Indiana County has not adopted a general countywide zoning ordinance; each municipality zones itself under the state Municipalities Planning Code, and, consistent with Pennsylvania's statewide pattern, some rural townships may not have adopted zoning at all -- confirm directly with the specific township or borough, particularly if evaluating land anywhere near Center Township given the scale of the Homer City redevelopment underway there. The Indiana County Planning Department (801 Water St, Indiana) handles subdivision review and land-use planning countywide, and the Register of Wills & Recorder of Deeds Office (Indiana County Courthouse, 825 Philadelphia Street) holds recorded deeds, mineral severances, easements, and plats.