The City of Trenton has abandoned its effort to annex 600 acres of land from its neighbors for an Amazon Web Services data center — at least for now.
City Attorney Nick Ziepfel sent a letter to Butler County administrator Judi Boyko on Monday, notifying the county of its decision to withdraw the petition, effective immediately.
“Petitioners reserve all rights to refile a future petition for annexation covering all or any portion of the subject property,” Ziepfel wrote. “Nothing in this notice shall be construed as a waiver of any such right.”
The Butler County Commission had been scheduled to hold a public hearing on Tuesday about the annexation petition, following decisions by the two townships who hold the land — Madison and St. Clair — to deny Trenton’s request.
Though the townships objected, the type of petition both allows the commission to make a final decision and permits Trenton to amend its request to resolve the two townships’ concerns. Now, Ziepfel indicated Trenton wants to revisit the annexation after the Nov. 3 election.
Boyko said the commissioners still held the hearing Tuesday, during which they unanimously acknowledged and approved Trenton’s decision to withdraw the petition.
Is there a path forward for Amazon’s data center?
On Election Day, Trenton voters will decide whether to ban data centers above 25 megawatts in the city. Rescheduling until after the election allows Trenton and Amazon Web Services to know the result of the vote before deciding whether to pursue annexation again.
But even if Trenton voters do pass the charter amendment, there’s still another potential path for Amazon Web Services: the company could choose to go through Madison and St. Clair townships instead of annexing the land.
St. Clair, which enacted a 12-month moratorium on data centers in May, has its own zoning resolution which Amazon would have to navigate.
But Madison Township trustee president Jeff Willoughby said that is not the case for his township.
“All of our zoning is done through the county, because we’ve never had a large development or anything in the township that would require us to [create our own zoning],” Willoughby said.
In this scenario, if nothing changes, the decision would be up to the Butler County Commission.
In June, the county enacted a six-month moratorium on data centers for Madison and five other townships to allow time to consider whether county zoning is adequate enough to prepare for data centers. The moratorium is set to expire in December, but Willoughby said the township has not received any communication from the county about how it plans to amend the county zoning, if at all.
“We need to have some kind of zoning to ensure that people around it — wherever these places like to be developed — have protection from the noise, from the traffic, from visibility that occurs around these developments,” Willoughby said.
Boyko said the commissioners have not discussed the matter together, publicly or privately, yet.
“It’s all been through me, where I’m just gleaning their interest [on] what they would be interested in perhaps permitting,” Boyko said. “There has been no consensus yet, so I’m not really at liberty to share what their position is.”
Willoughby said it’s a matter of “wait and see” until after the election for his township, because annexation is the only thing he and the other trustees can control.
“Somebody asked me about that. They said, ‘Well you guys can just vote no on this,’” Willoughby said. “I said, ‘How would we do that?’”
Amazon Web Services did not return a request for comment about whether it plans to continue its play for the site.
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