In My Opinion - by Bob Ruth
June 12, 2026 — Bob Ruth
The fight over a mega data center in Grove City is not over.
Mike Lebow, co-founder and managing partner of the Texas development company promoting the 310-acre complex, indicated he is still interested in pursuing the project.
The Headwaters Site Development chief made his comments following a 6-1 vote by City Council on June 1 to enact a one-year moratorium on consideration of the project.
“We believe this is the right use of the land . . . and we hope through the planning process we can get that message through to City Council,” Lebow told WBNS-TV News, Channel 10. Following the Council meeting, Lebow and four of his associates dined at Plank’s on Broadway with Mayor Ike Stage, several members of Stage’s cabinet and Council members Randy Holt and Alan Sturm. Holt was the lone dissenter on the moratorium ordinance.
So, let’s re-examine some of what Lebow and his allies have told City Hall in recent days.
In answer to a series of embarrassingly soft-ball questions from Holt at the June 1 Council meeting, Lebow said the eventual owner of the industrial complex would pay tens of millions of dollars in so-called up-front tariffs to defray infrastructure and electricity costs necessary for AEP-Ohio to serve the massive data center. Lebow claimed the money would guarantee any rate increases to homeowners will not be caused by the Grove City data center.
But Lebow forgot to mention one of the tenets of economics – the law of supply-and-demand. It goes like this: When demand outstrips supply, prices go up. It’s been that way since Cro-Magnan humans traded arrow heads with Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The data-center tariffs do little to lessen the law of supply-and-demand. AEP officials have acknowledged that energy-hungry data centers have stretched their ability to provide power to Ohio’s residential and commercial customers. The electric utility has been forced to go outside its own grid and rely on out-of-state energy sources, AEP officials explain.
And here’s where supply-and-demand comes into play. The exponentially high demand for power from central Ohio’s 70 data centers outstrips AEP’s in-state supply, ergo, everybody’s electricity bills keep rising for homeowners and data centers. The only difference is that data centers are money machines producing billions of dollars in profits for the high-tech companies that own them. They can easily afford ever-increasing electricity bills. The average homeowner can’t.
State Sen. Shane Wilkin, a Republican from Hillsboro, recently reminded fellow members of the state Legislature’s Select Committee on Data Centers of the law of supply-and-demand. “How does that not drive up the (electricity) bills?” he asked, referring to data centers’ humongous need for power.
In his speech to Council, Lebow characterized his proposed mega complex as a “modest . . . low impact development.”
Really?
It’s difficult for the average person to fathom the size of Lebow’s supposed “low impact development.” Imagine one football field. Then increase that by 2.6 times. That would be the size – 150,000 square feet – of just one building in the complex. And there would be six of them – 15.5 total football fields (including end zones). Almost 1 million square feet of building space. That’s why the industry calls such monstrosities hyper-scalers.
In addition, according to Headwaters Development’s preliminary re-zoning application, some of its buildings could be seven stories high. That’s the height of Mount Carmel Medical Center in Grove City.
How much electricity does a hyper-scale complex like the one being proposed for Grove City use? Believe it or not, as much power as all the households in Grove City times five or six, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s right – as much household electricity as five or six Grove Cities.
Lebow bobbed and weaved when asked pointed questions by Council members Melissa Anderson and Mohamed Omar. These inquiries were in contrast to the soft-ballers tossed by Holt.
Anderson noted that Headwaters Development would not be the eventual owner and operator of the massive complex. A high-tech company like Google or Amazon would probably be the so-called end-user of the Grove City project. So, how could Lebow guarantee that the eventual end-user would operate a lower impact center, rather than one accommodating artificial intelligence (AI)? Anderson asked.
Lebow did not answer her question. Instead, of talking about actual operations at the proposed data center, he discussed zoning limitations the city could impose on the size and configuration of buildings in the complex.
Lebow was similarly evasive when questioned by Omar about local communities’ responses to other Headwaters Development projects. Lebow claimed Muskogee, Oklahoma, welcomed one of the company’s data center complexes.
But he gave no details about the local response to a proposed 60-acre data center complex in Fauquier County, Virginia. The obvious reason for Lebow’s oversight: A grassroots anti-data center movement there resulted in Headwaters Development withdrawing its re-zoning application in 2024.
Multibillion-dollar high-tech companies are building these things faster than ever. The Columbus Dispatch on June10 ran a photo of five sprawling “tent” data center buildings under construction in New Albany by Meta (Facebook) AI. The roofs and walls of these buildings are made of high-performance canvas, the Dispatch noted.
The industry scoffs at critics who allege that fast-changing technology will make most of today’s data centers obsolete within 10 years or so. But how long do you suppose a “tent” data center building will last? Obviously not decades.
Data centers are owned and operated by the wealthiest, most profitable companies in America – high-tech behemoths. The Big Seven high-tech companies account for one-third of the total market value of the S&P 500, according to Fidelity Investments. These seven companies and affiliated businesses have accounted for up to 60 percent of the growth in the stock market in recent years, Fidelity adds.
Despite rolling in money, many data centers have negotiated exemptions from the state’s sales and use taxes. Signal Ohio, a non-profit news coalition, estimates Ohio loses $1.6 billion a year to these sales tax exemptions – 11 times original projections. And most experts agree the $1.6 billion estimate is low.
Yet, Headwaters Development mentioned the possibility of even more tax incentives and exemptions in a so-called Project Narrative it filed with Grove City on May 27. These tax exemptions, if approved by City Council, would reduce by millions of dollars a year revenue that ordinarily would go toward assisting sexually abused children and orphans; low-income seniors; the developmentally disabled and mentally ill; and those lost souls who are addicted to alcohol and drugs.
In effect, Headwaters Development wants to siphon millions of dollars from helping Franklin County’s most vulnerable and put that money into the pockets of multibillionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It reminds one of Marie Antoinette’s infamous comment about the poor, “Let them eat cake.”
(See a companion commentary headlined “Berry Lambasts Developer’s Tactics.”)
