Lorain County is home to more than 800 farms like the one owned by Kim Polen. She lives on Russia Road in New Russia Township on nearly 1,000 acres of farmland with her husband and two kids.
Together, they tend to their crops, raise cows and collect eggs from their coop with 22 chickens.
“Right now, there's three of those generations ... working on a farm all together," Polen said. "It's just been a wonderful experience, and I can't even imagine what it would be like if we had to uproot and move somewhere else.”
But the development planned for farmland near their property threatens what her family has worked so hard to build, Polen said.
“Everything that we've worked so hard to build here, whether it's the physical buildings, but then also the relationships with other farmers in the community," Polen said. "Having that open field feeling that you're able to be out in the country and not have to worry about somebody being right next to you, and I think that's going to be harder and harder to find as farmland gets lost.”
There’s nearly 1,000 acres around the airport that’s already open for development. New Russia Township’s board of trustees voted Tuesday against rezoning an additional 622 acres of farmland next to the airport.
"This is not something that we want in this township," Trustee Scott Justin said, "and there's just too many unknown variables."
The Land and the 'Megasite'
Before the New Russia trustees’ vote, Polen, Will Schlechter, who’s running for county commissioner and has a farm nearby in Henrietta Township, and New Russia Township resident Andrea Barlow drove reporters from Ideastream Public Media around the site.
“So here on the right is where the mega site would start," Polen said. "All of this empty land all the way clear over to Route 58, and then all the way south down here."
That’s just the 622 acres from the failed rezoning request. Behind a fence next to it is the Lorain County Airport. The goal is to combine the two and then find one or more high-tech manufacturers to move in, Team NEO CEO Matt Dolan said.
"That is a very attractive piece of property for economic development," he said.
Team NEO is the economic development agency for Northeast Ohio. Team NEO is working with Liberty Development Company in Westlake to prepare the site and eventually attract a manufacturer.
"There are very few of those," Dolan said. "There are very few 1,000-acre properties but then you throw on all the uniqueness of being in Northeast Ohio.”
Team NEO is the local partner of Jobs Ohio, the statewide non-profit that uses proceeds from liquor sales to spur economic development. Jobs Ohio has other sites with more than 1,000 acres available to developers listed on their website but none of those are close to population centers like this one.
Schlechter’s family has worked on his farm in Henrietta Township for seven generations.
“So, you know, it’s a big risk, I think," Schlechter said. "Same as Intel down in Columbus. That’s still up in the air.”
In 2022, the chip manufacturer Intel announced plans to invest $28 billion near Columbus with production scheduled to being in 2025.
Early last year, the company announced semiconductor production would not get underway until 2030 or 2031.
“Lorain County missed an opportunity a few years ago because we didn’t have the infrastructure needed to bring that in," Schlechter said. "So they felt that, ‘Ok, we missed the boat on that one, we’re not going to miss the boat again.’ But do we really want it?”
So far, New Russia Township residents have mostly said, “No.”
County moves forward with development plans
Lorain County commissioners are pushing ahead.
In 2024, the county applied for infrastructure grants from the state to make sure this area would be ready.
In 2025, the state of Ohio formally awarded Lorain County $67 million to begin sewer upgrades. The county promised $22 million of its own money.
The original plan was to run a sewer line from the mega site west to connect to another new pipe that runs northward to either a new wastewater plant or an upgraded plant near the lake. At the high end of the estimates submitted to the state to install all that infrastructure – about $440 million.
That plan is still going ahead after the no vote in New Russia Township, Lorain County Commissioner David Moore said.
"We’re building it. Businesses are going to come," he said. "It’s up to the local municipalities to decide what kind of businesses they want, and that’s what they’re doing now.”
In their application, county officials said the goal was for a microchip processing plant, similar to Intel and other promised, but delayed, projects in Indiana and Upstate New York.
Because no tenants have committed to Lorain County, residents are wondering if, after all this work, debate and cost, all they’ll end up with is a data center.
Team NEO, the developer and county officials say that’s not the plan.
“We're not marketing it for it. We think there's better opportunities for that property" Matt Dolan said. "So, it wouldn't be our preference to have a data center go there."
Experts warn of environmental risks in rural Ohio
More than 200 data centers are already operating in Ohio, according to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The use of AI is driving this spike in development in the state, said Charis Egland-Smith, the climate resource specialist with the Midwest Climate Collaborative at Case Western Reserve University's Great Lakes Energy Institute said.
As the AI boom continues, other rural communities like New Russia Township may also be a target for data center developers, she said.
“When you're an investor who wants to build a data center, like you're going to look for the place with like the least amount of resistance, and typically that's with fewer people, lots of land," Egland-Smith said. "And that's rural America.”
This development comes with drawbacks, Egland-Smith said. There’s increased energy rates, the diesel-powered generators on site and a high demand on water that strains local resources.
However, The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is now considering a proposal to revise its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting process. NPDES permits regulate the pollution from wastewater discharge, and they are required for any manufacturer that discharges wastewater in Ohio's waterways.
The Ohio EPA said this proposed change will streamline the application process for NPDES permits, but environmental advocates have raised concerns that the revision will allow data centers to dump untreated wastewater directly into rivers and streams.
In the meantime, the burden has fallen on members of Ohio’s rural communities like New Russia Township to come together and push back on upcoming development projects.
Residents in Adams and Brown counties introduced a petition Monday that would add an amendment to Ohio’s constitution to restrict development of data centers in the state.
Regardless, Lorain County’s townships are ready for whatever comes next, Polen said.
"We're just gonna keep an eye on all of them," she said. "We're not gonna sit back and relax because we know that we can't.”
Surrounding townships weigh their options
Brownhelm Township, north of New Russia Township, borders Lake Erie.
Change is coming along the entire path of that sewer including in Brownhelm Tonwship. Its plan is to control what they can by redoing their land use plan and zoning, which hasn’t been done in 20 years and has some surprises.
“There's a zoned piece of property on the south side of the turnpike that lists 25 — not feet — 25 stories as the maximum building that can go in there," said Brownhelm Township Trustee Dan DePalma. "Now, where in the world that came from, I have no idea.”
Just south of Brownhelm is Henrietta Township. Trustee Ron Baumann would prefer the sewer doesn’t go in the ground at all.
“You got Elyria, Lorain, with all these brownfields in there," Baumann said. "Let’s fix these cities up, let’s revitalize those instead of coming out and ruining our townships, the rural community.”
County Commissioner David Moore says the county is booming and the sewer project is the best way to control where new development happens.
The county is booming, County Commissioner David Moore said, and the sewer project is the best way to control where new development happens. That’s why the pipe is running north near Baumhart Road, which goes through Brownhelm and Henrietta Townships.
"That’s where I believe, and I’ve believed it forever, the development should be," Moore said. "That’s where the growth should be. That’s where the homes should be is up north.”
Residents expect to lose more farmland
The 622 acres in New Russia Township is mostly owned by Ceres Farms, an Indiana investment company, now owned by another financial services entity.
Ceres bought the land in 2018 from a local farmer who was auctioning off around 1,000 acres of farmland.
Marshall Simms’s family has owned a 40-acre plot in the proposed mega site since the 1990s. Simms, who is 43 years old, is a fifth-generation farmer here.
He and his wife, Cassandra, are raising their two sons on a farm next to the site.
Simms saw that auction back in 2018 as the best time to keep all that land in farming and was going to bid on 200 acres before Ceres came in and bought it all.
“I know there are many farmers around here that are upset by what’s happening now," he said. "That was the time to step up and buy the property then.”
Simms agreed to turn over his 40 acres to developers because it’s now surrounded by land that’s signed over to development, he said. His drainage goes through some of that land so, if it’s developed, his land would become worthless for farming.
"There's no other income source. There's no other business that I'm using to say, 'Hey, let's go buy farmland and, you know, buy some fancy equipment and farm it,'" he said. "I'm here just like my dad was, just like my grandfather was, making a living farming.”
Simms and his wife both see this development as a next step in a years-long transformation of this area from a rural community. Simms said he’ll still keep as much of his family’s 700 or so acres as farmland.
"It was rural maybe when I was a kid, but, you know, over the last 30 years, there's been a lot of people that have moved out this way and gotten their lot and build a house and it's not really rural anymore," he said.
Cassandra is originally from the city of Lorain. Whatever comes to the mega site, she said she hopes it produces a vibrant, lasting economy in this area.
“It's hard to say how positive it's gonna be, but it would be really good to see something develop that would support the area and would provide momentum and employment and opportunity for people," she said.
It’s not clear how much longer that’ll be farming, Simms said.
In the last eight years, he’s seen the price for an acre of farmland double , and anytime he’s competing against a housing developer to buy land, he knows he’s going to get outbid.
