WARREN, Ohio – The drive to construct data centers could have immediate positive effects across the Mahoning Valley, say members of the local building trades, despite apprehension from those who are concerned about these centers’ impact on utility costs and the environment.
“I think there’s a misconception,” said Martin Loney, president of the Western Reserve Building Trades & Construction Council and business agent for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 396.
Loney said data centers’ reputation for using massive amounts of energy and water to sustain their operations has led many communities to conclude that consumer utility rates would skyrocket should one of these projects locate nearby.
“When data centers first started being built in the 1990s, that was all true,” Loney said. “Too much water, too much power.”
Since then, these projects have adopted technologies that mitigate any impact on water and energy used within a community, he said. “What they’ve done now is that they’ve designed closed-loop cooling systems” that would essentially recycle water throughout the campus, he said. Net water usage, on average, would be the equivalent of two new hotels, he added.
To offset energy burdens on the grid, many of these companies have opted to construct behind-the-meter power sources – a small modular reactor, a gas-fired power plant or a small turbine, for example – that would provide electricity directly to a data center campus, Loney said. Any excess power would be sold back into the electrical grid.
The result would be lower electricity costs, Loney suggested. “Now they’re providing electricity instead of draining it,” he said.
Building Boom
Loney added that construction of new data centers is vital to satisfy demand as more industries adopt the use of technological advances such as artificial intelligence. AI is today used across a wide array of business sectors, including aerospace, defense, finance, medicine, manufacturing, communications and transportation.
New construction means more work for those in the local skilled trades, Loney said. “For us, we’re talking about 1,700 trade workers, on average, used on one of these data centers,” he said. “We’re looking at creating construction jobs and the tax benefits for the community.”
Data centers are buildings that house computer servers that power digital networks, AI platforms and cloud computing. Loney said building these data centers would require input from nearly every trade: operating engineers, concrete, electrical, pipefitting, welding, HVAC, ironworkers and others.
“The bulk of the work will be electricians and fitters because of the power and cooling,” Loney said. However, a new data center would likely engage almost all of the local crafts during the construction phase.
According to a United Association study, 93% of the country’s major data center projects have used union contractors. A recent Wall Street Journal article cited that many in the trades have experienced pay increases ranging from 25% to 30% when working on these projects.
As of August 2025, another 562 data centers are scheduled for construction across the United States, according to the United Association. On average, these projects require an approximate investment of $1 billion or more. Total project investment across the country is expected to hit $1.9 trillion, the UA report shows.
Opportunities in Lordstown, McDonald
In Lordstown, developer Bristolville 25 Developer LLC is eying the construction of a data center along state Route 45 that would employ approximately 1,600 during the construction phase and another 120 full-time positions at $84 per hour once the project is completed.
However, the Lordstown community has mobilized to resist development of these projects, citing the prospects of higher utility bills and noise pollution. In November, Village Council passed an ordinance to ban the construction of all data centers in the village, but in December it repealed the measure and instead placed a 180-day moratorium on development of these centers.
Bristolville has filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court against the village, claiming its zoning department violated the law and failed to advance the developer’s request to review its plans. Bristolville filed the plans in October, before any ban or moratorium was passed by Village Council.
The moratorium does not affect a small-scale data center that is under development at the former General Motors Assembly plant in Lordstown. SoftBank Group purchased the facility last year from Foxconn, which is now a tenant in the building and is slated to manufacture components there for AI data centers and servers.
Loney said work on the small data center is underway. And the expansion of AI data centers is now directly linked to Foxconn’s operation in Lordstown and sustaining jobs there.
“I just think there’s so much misconception about this,” he said.
Another proposed data center campus in the village of McDonald could be a signature project for the trades in the Mahoning Valley, said Mike Cenit, a principal of Applied Partners, a developer that owns 52 acres at the site of the former McDonald Steel Corp. Applied Partners is working with another developer and an as-yet unnamed end-user for the location.
Formal plans have yet to be filed with the village, Cenit said, but the concept is to expand the site to 350 acres and construct nearly 2.5 million square feet of data center space at the former industrial site. “The plan is for nine 275,000-square-foot buildings,” he said. “They anticipate 400 tradesmen over five years.”
The first phase would be site preparation and remediation of any ground contamination through soil removal. “That would be about 25 jobs for six months,” he said. “Then the infrastructure – sewers, water lines and power lines – would have to be laid, so you would have a year and a half to two years of ground construction” before work on the buildings could begin, he added.
Cenit said once the campus is finished, it would employ between 70 and 80 permanent workers.
“I think the way that McDonald is doing it is the right way,” Loney said. “You have a brownfield that needs remediated anyway, and it’s going to be a good partner for the village of McDonald.”
Members of the local building trades are already working on data centers elsewhere across the country, Loney said.
Cody Hilliard, business manager for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 64, said several of his members are employed on data center projects outside the area.
“Columbus is probably the biggest market they’re in,” he said. “As large as the population is there, they don’t have enough skilled tradesmen to fill the need because of growth.”
Loney noted that those opposed to data centers need to take a step back and evaluate the benefits these projects could bring to the area.
“I hope people do their due diligence to see that this is actually a good thing for communities,” Loney said. “This is the infrastructure of the future.”