Ohio leads the nation in data center-related ballot measures in the upcoming election, with 21 initiatives across 18 municipalities.
Issue 28 in Grove City is one of those ballot measures, with the goal of thwarting data-center developers.
The data center development company Headwaters submitted a preliminary development plan to Grove City in May. The plan asks Grove City to annex 310 acres southwest of the city for a data center campus with at least six warehouses of servers.
Protect Grove City
The property Headwaters wants to develop is directly across the street from Patricia Spillman’s family farm. The farm was founded by the Spillman family in 1861.
Spillman was approached about selling the family farm. She didn’t say how much Headwaters offered for the 100 acres the farm sits on, but she described a 32-acre plot down the road that was sold to the developers for $1.5 million. That’s $46,875 per acre.
Realtor Ryan Deeter said the price of land heavily depends on how big the parcel is. Over the last three years, the median sale price for land in Grove City is around $81,700 per acre. However, for the nine parcels that had more than 20 acres, that median sale price was closer to $20,000 per acre.
The sale of the land is contingent on Grove City annexing the 310 acres and Headwaters securing permits. Spillman said she understands that for the people who sold their land, it’s an attractive offer. However, she strongly declined.
“They have this whole area,” Spillman said, gesturing to the cornfield across the street. “It's sickening to look at that. It's not just me, it's all of my neighbors out here, all of our houses are gone and it's all replaced with warehouses.”
Spillman is referencing the preliminary plans Headwaters submitted. While no official proposal has been made for the plans, Spillman wasn’t going to wait around until it happened. She joined forces with Jen Belt and Karen Church and formed Protect Grove City.
“We formed a coalition fairly quickly and made sure that all residents within a three-mile radius of the site were aware of the workings that were going on,” Belt said. “We were trying to make sure that they showed up, got involved in their council meetings, emailed their council members and the mayor and the city and really pushed for a moratorium so that we could get a pause.”
Grove City's City Council did pass a year-long moratorium on data center development in June. Adjacent Jackson Township also passed a year-long moratorium and another nearby community, Pleasant Township, passed a permanent one.
Protect Grove City realized that a temporary pause on development wouldn’t actually stop data centers, just delay them.
“After that we realized very quickly that we probably should get something more permanent to happen so that we didn't have to exhaust ourselves every time a data center came wanting to build in this area,” Belt said.
The group worked with Cleveland-area attorney Robert Dintaman to draft a city charter amendment named the Community Consent Amendment. The amendment only names data centers once, in a list of examples for “Heavy Industrial Development.” It defines “Heavy Industrial Development” as any proposed development that occupies 50 or more acres, draws more than 20 megawatts of power at peak electrical capacity, or consumes more than 500,000 gallons of water a day.
Belt said not specifically targeting data centers was on purpose.
“It came from reading the room nationally and at the state level where other communities that try to restrict, ban, or regulate data centers directly find themselves in a position where they are then being sued or accused of discriminating against an industry. And we did not want that to happen,” Belt said. “We wanted to make sure that it was narrow enough to capture hyperscale data centers, but also broad enough to not mention the data center industry specifically.”
Concerns over legal action are not unfounded. Urbana, located in Champaign County, is currently dealing with a lawsuit from a data center developer because of the city’s decision to ban data centers. The developer says the change in city regulations violates state and federal laws.
After submitting petition signatures of the amendment, Protect Grove City sat down with Grove City's City Council to add amendments.
“We spent several weeks and a lot of back and forth listening to the law director tell us all the things he hated about the CCA and we would take it back to our attorney, and we would make a new draft and we'd bring it back,” Belt said. “And seven drafts later, we did have an amendment that we really, we were really proud of it, mostly because we worked on it together.”
Those compromises eventually fell through, with four of the seven city council members declining to pass the emergency legislation that would allow the changes to be added in one reading. So, the original version of the Community Consent Amendment became Issue 28.
Save Grove City
Belt, Church and Spillman said they’ve seen a relatively positive reaction to Issue 28, however, there are those who oppose the initiative.
Save Grove City is a group that was created to oppose Issue 28. One of the group's main arguments is that the amendment is too broad and could negatively impact development in Grove City.
“It does not talk about industry. It does not talk about if it's a non-profit. It doesn't talk about if it's a school or whatever,” said Cassie Ferguson, a volunteer with Save Grove City. “It has requirements that if it goes over those requirements or hits those requirements however you'd like to word it, it goes to a city vote.”
When asked about Protect Grove City's worry about legal action if the amendment was narrower, Ferguson said, "let them sue."
Ferguson continued, "I mean, if they really want to do that, and then the residents and elected officials and staff of Grove City would be able to counter that."
As for being overly broad, Protect Grove City said that the city’s law director has some discretion for what triggers a citywide vote. And if the law director gets it wrong, then there’s a citizen appeal process.
Grove City Mayor Ike Stage disagrees with that interpretation. He’s also against Issue 28, and said Protect Grove City’s interpretation of the amendment is not how Stephen J. Smith, the city's law director, sees it.
“The law director, I think, in a couple situations, made it very clear that if this amendment goes through and it goes into our constitution, our city charter, he can't make any discretionary decisions,” Stage said. “What is written is written.”
Ferguson is also worried if Issue 28 passes it could interfere with the other campaign she’s been volunteering for, passing Issue 6, a bond issue to replace Grove City High School and Westland High School.
“One of the concerns, because of the way this amendment is written, is that the new Grove City High School would have to go on the ballot next year to be approved by the residents of Grove City,” Ferguson said. “That delays the new high school and then costs more.”
Ferguson said even if citizens are able to appeal to overrule Smith’s interpretation on projects like a new high school, there will still be a delay. And even then, there's not a guarantee that the appeal would work.
“I feel that we're trying to put something permanent in place and backtrack on it, versus doing the things that we already have in our power, like contacting our elected officials, going to planning meetings, going to city council meetings, because the way the amendment was written, and why aren't those things included?” Ferguson said.
The “get something on the books now” angle is something Protect Grove City has pushed. Belt framed it as an immediate and solid way to prevent data centers, and that if issues arise, there’s nothing preventing Protect Grove City, Save Grove City or any other Grove City group from putting another amendment on the ballot.
Campaign Funds
Funding for the opposing groups is notable.
Preliminary campaign finance filings with the Franklin County Board of Elections indicate Protect Grove City, the pro-Issue 28 group, is a grassroots effort. The group has raised just more than $3,500 and has 34 unique donors.
In contrast, Save Grove City, the anti-Issue 28 group, has raised $145,000 from eight unique donors.
The group behind Save Grove City is the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
“In coordination with local officials and stakeholders in Grove City, the Ohio Chamber helped establish the 'No on Issue 28' committee. Residents deserve transparency, meaningful public input and strong protections when major developments are proposed,” said Adam Rapien, senior vice president of political engagement at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. “Issue 28, however, is an overly broad and inflexible approach that will create significant barriers to responsible economic growth.”
Officials with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce did not respond when asked which local officials they had worked with.
In addition to the $50,000 from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Save Grove City has received nearly $100,000 from construction contractor political action committees.
The construction industry in Ohio has been very supportive of data center development despite overall disapproval for the server warehouses. The stance the construction industry has taken isn’t necessarily pro-data center either but pro-construction.
