YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Jeff Alderman has lived in Lordstown for four years. After serving two decades in the U.S. Air Force, the Newton Falls native wanted to return home to be closer to family and old friends. The region had many attributes, he emphasizes, including a comparatively low cost of living and a place where he could pursue interests of his own after retiring from the military.
“Coming back to stuff like this is definitely not what I had foreseen,” Alderman says. “So it’s kind of disheartening.”
Alderman is among a constituency in Lordstown who oppose the construction of a $3.6 billion data center in the village. The project, he and others allege, would dramatically drive up utility costs, since these centers are known to be major consumers of water used to cool heated data servers and electricity needed to power equipment.
In October, Bristolville 25 Developer LLC, based in Dublin, Ohio, submitted plans before Lordstown’s zoning department that calls for constructing a data center campus on 130 acres owned by BHGH Properties along state Route 45. On Nov. 3, Lordstown Village Council voted to institute a ban on data centers during a session packed with residents who voiced their opposition to the project. Council has since rescinded that measure and has instead imposed a 180-day moratorium on new centers in the village. Bristolville responded by filing a lawsuit against the village, alleging officials had violated the law and refused to address the plan until after council’s initial vote. The matter is before the Supreme Court of Ohio.
“It’s common sense,” Alderman says. “These companies that are coming in and want to pursue these ventures should incorporate into their bottom line the cost of doing business and not just assume that they’re going to pass that on to somebody else.”
From Mining to AI
These issues have not deterred major developers from exploring opportunities in the region. In the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, at least five data center projects are either underway or in the early proposal stages.
Some of these projects are the result of cryptocurrency mining operations pivoting toward the development of HPC/AI data business. The shift could have a major impact in both northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
“We were sitting on a really strong power pipeline in incredibly advantageous areas for HPC and AI data,” says Liam Wilson, chief operating officer of Bitfarms, a bitcoin mining company that established a data center in Sharon, Pa., a year ago. Since then, Bitfarms has reevaluated its business model for the site – which sits on approximately 18 acres of former industrial land along Clark Street.
“We quickly worked with consultants to work out whether we could transfer the business over to an AI data center provider, where the revenue far outweighs that of bitcoin mining and volatility is far less than bitcoin mining,” Wilson says. The site, he adds, has little potential for development other than a data center.
The plan is to completely raze the building on Clark Street and construct a sleek, new AI data center that would require an investment of between $1 billion and $1.3 billion, Wilson notes. “It’s a complete rebuild,” he says. Once finished, the data center would employ 134 people.
“Construction should take between 12 and 18 months, and we’re really hopeful that we’ll have revenue coming through by the back end of 2027,” he says.
At present, the site consumes 30 megawatts of power, and the strategy is to boost the operation to a 110-megawatt center, Wilson says. Water usage, he says, would be confined to a closed-loop cooling system that would require a single fill-up, and some additional water usage for regular maintenance. The overwhelming share of water usage at the site, he says, would be through routine staff functions, not cooling.
“The closed loop system is incredibly expensive,” Wilson says, noting the technology has evolved from earlier data centers from other operators that didn’t take the community’s concerns into consideration. “That’s certainly our intent – to do the right thing by the community,” he says.
Bitfarms operates another campus in Panther Creek in eastern Pennsylvania, and is in the process of developing a massive, 1.6 gigawatt-power AI campus in Scrubgrass, approximately 40 miles east of Sharon in Venango County.
“We’ve received nothing but a very warm welcome from the people of Sharon,” Wilson says. “The reception has been fantastic.”
Weathersfield Project
Other crypto mining companies are also shifting gears in response to heightened demand for AI. In Weathersfield Township in Trumbull County, for example, the bitcoin miner Bitdeer is considering ramping up operations at the former Niles electrical generation plant on Belmont Avenue. According to the company’s January production and operations update released Feb. 10, Bitdeer plans to commission 300 megawatts of capacity at the 42-acre site by the fourth quarter of 2028, one quarter earlier than the company had previously projected.
According to the operations update, the site would be used for HPC/AI capabilities. Bitdeer acquired the property for $3.4 million on May 5, 2025, records show. At press time, no plans for the site had been submitted to township officials.
The company is also in the process of developing a larger, 570-megawatt HPC/AI campus in Clarington, Ohio, in Monroe County.
“Over the past several months, we’ve seen a significant shift in market dynamics around AI data center development,” Haris Basit, Bitdeer’s chief strategy officer, said on a conference call with investors in February. “Demand for large-scale, co-location capacity has increased substantially, and we’ve responded by refining our approach to better align with this opportunity.”
Industrial Sites
Former industrial sites across the region are especially inviting to data centers, especially if these areas are unlikely to be redeveloped.
Such is the case of property that once housed U.S. Steel Corp.’s McDonald Works, says Mike Cenit, managing partner at Allied Partners Inc., which owns the land. Since the property was once home to a large steelmaking operation that employed thousands, the power infrastructure is already in place. “Granted, it’s old,” he says, “but there are cables coming into that property. The infrastructure is there. That’s one of the advantages.”
Cenit says there is a large data center developer interested in the former steel mill site. The land most recently was the location for McDonald Steel Corp., a special shapes steel manufacturer that opened in 1980 after U.S. Steel shuttered its plant there. McDonald Steel closed its doors two years ago, and Allied has been clearing the site.
The project involves combining Allied Partners’ 52 acres with other contiguous parcels that would total 350 acres, Cenit says. At press time, principals were putting together a site plan to submit to the Village of McDonald for review.
The center could be as large as 2.5 million square-feet on the 350 acres, Cenit says. “There could be a commitment of up to 900 megawatts eventually on that site,” he says, making it among the largest in Ohio. Still, there are “mountains of paperwork” that needs to be completed in order to secure the necessary energy commitment from Ohio Edison.
Cenit is also working on a similar, but much smaller project, in nearby Alliance.
Projects such as these, Cenit continues, are supported by “three legs,” in this case, power, water and community commitment. “A 2.5 million square-foot facility on 350 acres – It’ll look so nice, but it’ll be lost in there,” he says. “If this doesn’t happen, then it would be hundreds of years before that land is developed.”
Meanwhile, other local data projects are moving forward.
A small data center, for example, is in development at the former General Motors Lordstown plant in Lordstown. The plant, now owned by the Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group, plans to use its major tenant there, Foxconn, to manufacture components for data centers as part of its $500 billion Stargate initiative. Part of the plan is to also construct a small data center at the site, the investment group announced in August of last year. Work is ongoing on the project, according to a source familiar with the project.
That project has not elicited any opposition, since the footprint and capacity is relatively small. The Lordstown moratorium does not impact this effort, since the project was announced and in progress before any regulatory
Opposing Forces
Still the standoff in Lordstown between the village and Bristolville is indicative of a nationwide dilemma: As demand for artificial intelligence platforms rapidly expands across the United States, so too must the development of new data centers.
These campuses – usually composed of buildings stacked inside with servers equipped to handle high performance computing, or HPC, capacity – are vital for growth in the tech sector, which benefits health care, manufacturing, government and defense, education, consumers, transportation, and other businesses – many of which have integrated AI in some form into their operations.
However, a growing number of communities – especially in Ohio – have steadfastly opposed hosting any of these centers, citing the potential of rising energy and water rates, as well as disruption for those who live near these operations. To date, Ohio is home to approximately 200 data centers – from small operations to larger ones supported by giants such as Meta and Amazon.
Ohio lawmakers, responding to concerns from constituents, have drafted several pieces of bi-partisan legislation that would establish requirements for data centers looking to build in Ohio. H.B. 706, for example, introduced in February, would require these centers to establish long-term service agreements of at least 12 years with electric utilities, prohibit electric utilities from recovering data center costs from ratepayers, require the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to create standards for interconnection practices, and mandate financial assurance from the developer before any construction could begin.
The goal is to “ensure costs of new infrastructure and grid upgrades needed to serve these facilities are not shifted onto existing Ohio ratepayers.”
That big tech should pick up the tab for the costs associated with new data center development was also a point raised by President Donald Trump during his State of the Union Address. Trump said his administration had negotiated a “new rate payer protection pledge,” in which he instructed these large technology firms to construct their own power generation plants to serve their data centers.
That could prove challenging, too, says Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow, governance studies and director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institute, given the status of the country’s aging electrical infrastructure. “You have communities where the grid has not been upgraded in decades,” she says. “We need to invest more in the electrical grid in the United States.”
Caught Off-Guard
Meanwhile, these data centers are using existing resources to power their operations, Lee says. “It’s clear they’re plugging into existing electrical assets or the existing water assets. So, that’s where people are beginning to see an increase in their utility bills.”
What is also clear is that the data center boom has caught many communities off guard, Lee says. “Municipalities and counties did not think about zoning when it came to data centers,” she says. Data center development at this level is relatively new, and many communities are simply unprepared or have acted too late to address some of the concerns and challenges that might affect residents.
This is particularly so in places such as Ohio, since data centers have found the cooler climate, abundance of water resources, and plenty of land as incentives to build, Lee says. At the same time, communities are intrigued by new development that could translate into tax revenues.
An answer is for AI companies and local leaders to establish community benefit agreements, Lee adds. These are formal documents that spell out the costs and benefits of data centers and identify areas of cooperation.
“I think it’s becoming quite clear that there needs to be further conversation, as well as a much more transparent narrative of how much energy and water data centers are consuming,” she says. “The challenge is that a lot of this is just unknown to people. It’s quite new.”
She says it’s imperative that localities examine their existing zoning laws and whether they can be adapted to responsibly regulate or address data center development. “First and foremost, review your zoning and compliance rules prior to them coming to you,” she says.
That’s precisely the thrust behind efforts in Vienna Township, says Trustee Phil Pegg.
Although no developer has approached officials or landowners about building a data center, the township recently passed a 180-day moratorium on such development. This gives the township more time to consider tweaking zoning measures that include restricting noise levels, power regulations, and terms of water usage related to these facilities.
“If the center uses more than five megawatts, for example, then they’re going to have to have some type of on-site or adjacent power source,” he says. Also, the township may also mandate that data centers employ a closed-loop cooling system to control water use. “These are things we’re just going to discuss, to see what we want to do.”
What is important is that the township be proactive as data centers increase their penetration into Ohio, Pegg says. He noted that the impasse in Lordstown, for example, is the result of not having many of these issues addressed before developers came to town.
“You need to get ahead of these things,” he says.
Pictured at top: A rendering of Bitfarms’ proposed $1 billion data center in Sharon, Pa.
