Misty Hollow Energy & Data Campus: What a 1-Million-Square-Foot Data Center in Butler County, PA Means for Contractors

Misty Hollow Energy & Data Campus is a proposed data center with a 1,000,000-square-foot footprint and 300 megawatts of on-site natural gas power, on a 274-acre site at 614 Prospect Road in Forward Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania. The township planning commission tabled the preliminary plan on October 1, 2026, and the developer's application estimates construction will start in fall 2027. For contractors, it is closer to an industrial campus than a data hall, and it will need abatement, demolition, scaffolding, mechanical insulation, fireproofing and coatings crews.

Last updated: October 13, 2026. We will update this post as the general contractor, tenant and construction schedule are announced.

Project snapshot

What is being built?

The plan pairs a data center with its own 300 MW power plant, a wastewater treatment facility, an office building and a security building. That makes Misty Hollow closer to an industrial campus than a typical commercial build, and it pulls in far more trades than the data hall alone.

The project is still early. No general contractor or tenant has been named, and the plan is in the township's preliminary review. The first public hearing on October 1 drew about 400 people, and public comment was largely opposed, so approval is not certain.

Which trades will Misty Hollow need?

Electrical work gets the headlines on data centers, but a campus like Misty Hollow keeps many other specialty crews busy from site clearing through operation:

• Site preparation. The preliminary plans call for demolishing all existing structures on the site. Older structures are inspected for asbestos before they come down, and any regulated asbestos is removed by licensed workers first. See how to hire a certified asbestos abatement crew.
• Scaffolding. The data halls, the generation building and the wastewater tanks all need safe access. See scaffold carpenter staffing.
• Mechanical insulation. Closed-loop cooling means long runs of chilled-water piping that must be insulated to control condensation, and the power plant adds high-temperature exhaust and process piping. See insulation staffing.
• Fireproofing. Large steel structures often need spray-applied fireproofing to meet their fire-resistance ratings.
• Industrial coatings. Epoxy floors, tank linings for the wastewater facility, and protective coatings on steel.
• Ongoing maintenance. Once the power plant is running, scheduled outages bring recurring work for shutdown crews.

Western Pennsylvania has other large projects competing for the same trades. Aligned Data Centers broke ground on September 10, 2026 on Project Phoenix, a 2 GW data center campus in Shippingport, Beaver County, which it expects to support 3,000 construction jobs. When projects like these overlap, experienced insulators, scaffold builders and certified abatement workers get scarce fast.

What should contractors do now?

• Watch the approvals. The planning commission expects to consider the plan again on October 22, 2026.
• Plan your crew before you bid. Know where your extra labor will come from so you can bid confidently on a larger scope.
• Get compliance documents ready. Mission-critical sites often require background checks, drug screens, site-specific safety orientation and current certifications for every worker.
• Expect local-hire pressure. Large projects under community scrutiny often favor contractors who can show a local workforce.

How does Cruitfly help contractors on data center projects?

• Specialty crews, not general labor: abatement, demolition, scaffolding, mechanical insulation, fireproofing, coatings and environmental remediation. Cruitfly does not supply electricians.
• Fast, compliant staffing: typical fill time is 48 to 72 hours, and every worker is a W2 Cruitfly employee covered by Cruitfly's workers' compensation.
• Certifications you can check: records are shared before the crew mobilizes.
• Proven at scale: on a university campus demolition and abatement project in Georgia, Cruitfly scaled to 86 workers, most of them local, for a project that ran more than ten months.

Cruitfly tracks every major project like this one on its data center construction staffing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bidding on Misty Hollow or another data center project?

Call Cruitfly at 317-426-7703 or request a crew to talk through your crew plan before the schedule gets tight.

Sources: Forward Township project page and filings, ButlerRadio, CBS News Pittsburgh, WPXI, Keystone Newsroom.