In My Opinion - by Bob Ruth
September 17, 2026 — Bob Ruth
(Full disclosure: The author of this commentary lives about half-a-mile from a 310-acre data center being proposed for Grove City. Some of his friends and family members live even closer.)
A massive data center in Grove City was met with skepticism from City Council members almost as soon as it was proposed more than 18 months ago, a blue-ribbon task force learned recently.
The hyper-scale complex would strain local utilities, while producing relatively few jobs, the Council members worried, according to City Development Director Kyle Rauch.
A Texas-based real estate company first informed City Hall in January or February of 2025 of plans for the sprawling industrial complex, Rauch told the Data Center Task Force. And within a few weeks, Council members began flooding his office with questions, Rauch added.
The proposed complex “didn’t receive a great response . . . from Council,” he explained at a task force meeting last month.
Council members’ concerns about jobs and utilities were similar to those that have been voiced by data center critics for years. These critics note that data centers are some of the most automated industrial complexes in the nation. While data centers strain local water and power resources, they produce only a fraction of the jobs of manufacturing factories and other high-employment facilities, critics contend.
For example, Mount Carmel Medical Center on N. Meadows Drive occupies only 67 acres but employs 1,500 workers and 400 doctors. Annual revenue from the city’s payroll tax increased by more than 60 percent to $45 million after the hospital opened, according to budget figures from City Hall.
In contrast, the Grove City data center would occupy 310 acres (almost five times larger than Mount Carmel) and employ only 192 workers, according to Development Department estimates given to the task force. In addition, the city would gain only $280,000 in annual payroll taxes from those workers, the Development Department estimates. That’s six-tenths of one percent of the city’s total yearly payroll tax revenue.
In addition, data centers, in the long run, actually cause job losses – not gains, critics say. Data centers are the beating hearts of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, critics note. And AI is allowing employers to cut jobs by the tens of thousands, critics contend. Millions of additional jobs will be lost to AI in the near future, they add.
All of these facts beg the obvious question: Do data centers’ many liabilities outweigh their benefits? The answer for many is a resounding YES. Grove City needs more developments like Mount Carmel, these critics say, not massive job-killing data centers.
Despite early skepticism from Council members, Headwaters Site Development of Dallas forged ahead with its lobbying effort. Toward the end of 2025, Headwaters hired two prestigious law firms – Vorys and Plank – to help promote its case at City Hall, Rauch told the task force. Vorys is one of the largest corporate law firms in central Ohio, while Plank is a land-use and zoning specialist with deep ties to City Hall.
By March of this year, much of Headwaters’ behind-the-scenes maneuvering was becoming public, and opposition among residents gained steam.
About this time, Mayor Ike Stage’s administration hired a Columbus public relations firm through a $72,000 unbid contact to promote economic growth such as data centers. The pr firm’s taxpayer-financed effort is assisting the administration’s campaign against a proposed City Charter amendment that would require voter approval of large industrial complexes like data centers. The citizen-initiated amendment (Issue 28) will appear on the Nov. 3 citywide ballot.
Publicly, Stage did not take a stand on Headwaters’ proposed data center. But privately the mayor lambasted data-center critics and claimed similar developments have been economic boons for other cities. These comments did not surprise City Hall insiders. After all, the mayor was one of the loudest cheerleaders for a smaller data center proposal that was unanimously rejected by the City Council in July 2023, these insiders noted.
Despite Stage’s efforts, opposition to the hyper-scale industrial complex mushroomed. Residents besieged City Hall officials. Social media and local news outlets spread the word. Councilman Mohamed Omar proposed a one-year moratorium on data centers. Omar’s ordinance also called for creating a task force to study data centers’ benefits and liabilities.
On June 1, the day Council was to vote on the moratorium, more than 200 residents jammed City Hall, and Council voted 6-1 to impose the moratorium. Councilman Randy Holt was the lone dissenter.
Other related issues have also been discussed during task force meetings.
State law allows mayors and city councils to divert money from these property-tax supported agencies for use on municipal infrastructure and other capital-improvement projects that benefit real estate developments. Because of the lost revenue, these county agencies are forced to ask voters to approve higher tax levies more often, TIF critics say.
The 16-member task meets the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 6 p.m. in the City Hall basement.
