96 Pennsylvania landowners just received $586 million for 1,700 acres. Now hyperscale AI development is colliding with America’s largest Amish farming community — as the state simultaneously rewrites the rules governing its schools, farms, midwives and families.
The buy
On March 18, 2026, Salem Township — a Luzerne County community of about 4,000 people, none of them Amish — closed the largest coordinated farmland sale in Pennsylvania history. Ninety-six families sold 1,700 acres for more than $500 million. The Wall Street Journal puts the total at $586 million, an average of $5.5 million per family and roughly $330,000 per acre — about thirty-five times the current Pennsylvania farm-real-estate average of $9,560 per acre. Marilee and David Kiliti, who raised hogs on 89 acres and worked construction and forklifts on the side, cashed out at more than $22 million and are now building a house with a theater room and a second-story hot tub.
The buyer was QTS Data Centers, purchasing through a Delaware shell called Salem Township Holdings LLC. QTS is owned by Blackstone, which took QTS private in a roughly $10 billion deal that closed in August 2021. The corporate chain, from the state property records back to the parent, runs:
