LOWELL — Markley Lowell LLC has filed an extensive public records request with the city of Lowell for the correspondence of Mayor Erik Gitschier and City Councilors Sean McDonough and Kim Scott with various other entities regarding the company’s operations.
All three city leaders, who have been frequent and vocal critics of the data center’s operations in Lowell’s Scared Heart neighborhood, confirmed they were the named parties in the request.
“I believe in transparency and accountability,” Glitchier said by phone Tuesday. “I’m OK with whatever they need. The neighborhood has been a leader in this discussion.”
The Boston-based law firm Choate filed the request with Lowell’s Records Access Officer John Pyers on Aug. 3.
“I represent Markley Lowell LLC, and served the records requests on its behalf,” Samuel Rudman, a partner in Choate’s Litigation and Investigations Group and head of the Business and Financial Litigation practice, said by email Tuesday.
The relevant timeframe for all records is January 1, 2024, until the date of the city’s response to Markley’s request.
Markley Lowell history
The Markley Group LLC is a state-of-the-art data-storage and cloud-computing company. In addition to its Lowell facility, the company has an almost million-square-foot fiber data hub center, also known as a connected carrier hotel, above Macy’s in Boston’s Downtown Crossing.
Like Markley Boston, Markley Lowell is a colocation data center that rents secure space to more than 500 clients to run their own technology. Its systems power and provide routing to a wide variety of private companies, state and local governments, universities and internet companies.
The records request includes contacts between the city officials and various members of the public including Sacred Heart residents Jake Fortes and Eileen Castle, who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Markley and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
This past April, 10 residents filed a lawsuit that challenged the final decision by MassDEP authorizing Markley’s operation of 27 industrial diesel backup generators and 16 cooling towers in the middle of the densely populated residential community prior to final plan approval, a process the suit called a “flawed air quality plan.”
On Monday, Middlesex Superior Court Judge William Barrett granted a motion to stay further installation of emergency backup diesel generators at Markley Lowell while the case proceeds in the court.
Other parties named in records request
The Sun received a redacted copy of a request that lists more than a dozen targets of inquiry, such as any communication between the councilors and the law firms representing various resident-led lawsuits against Markley Group LLC.
The request specifically names the Conservation Law Foundation; Colona, Doyle & Simeola; Fitch Law Partners LLP; and Liddle Sheets, P.C.
The records request also seeks “all texts, emails, and other correspondence between Gitschier, McDonough and Scott and any representative” of 350 Mass, Party for Socialism and Liberation and Honest Future for Lowell.
Those organizations have been active in speaking out against Lowell’s data center.
The sweeping records request also seeks any correspondence between the councilors and “any other Lowell City Councilor” the Department of Planning and Development and City Manager Tom Golden.
“Like every other public records request, the City Solicitor’s Office is dealing with it,” Golden said by phone Tuesday.
The request also targets specific information, such as the drainage work taking place on Bourne Street, which runs adjacent to Markley Lowell’s eastern boundary, as well as any correspondence between the councilors and “any representative of the media concerning the Markley Lowell data center.”
Records request dates to data center expansion plans
The request for information starting in January 2024 corresponds to Markley Lowell’s expansion of its on-site, diesel-fueled back-up generators.
The company started its operations in 2016 with seven diesel generators, but as its mission-critical operations expanded, the plant’s energy infrastructure at 1 Markley Way did too. By 2022, Markley applied for a MassDEP air permit to add 20 diesel generators and 16 cooling towers to the 14-acre site.
Neighbors have consistently testified to noise and air quality concerns, ongoing and disruptive construction projects and violations of approved permitting.
By March of this year, in response to both councilor and neighborhood concerns, the council approved a one-year data center moratorium.
Interestingly, the records request also asks for any correspondence with any other person regarding the Markley company, and “any person concerning your efforts to impeded, halt, or otherwise affect the business of the Markley Lowell data center in Lowell, MA.”
In a separate correspondence received by The Sun, the Law Department called those requests “overly broad.”
“Thank you for your anticipated cooperation,” Rudman’s request said. “If you fail to reply to this request in the time provided by law, then we will pursue administrative and legal remedies.”
Lowell has agreed to produce documents in response to the requests by Aug. 28.
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