Bitdeer Technologies Data Center, Portage County, Ohio

Bitdeer Technologies Group, a Singapore-based bitcoin miner and AI company, wants to build a 15-building data center campus of up to 750 megawatts on 257 acres of the Turnpike Commerce Center in Shalersville Township, near Mantua in Portage County, Ohio. On September 10 the township zoning commission voted unanimously to recommend defining any use of 25 megawatts or more as heavy industry, which would effectively keep the data center out because no land in Shalersville is zoned for heavy industry.

The first phase would be two data halls of about 48,000 square feet each and a 51,500-square-foot office, drawing about 150 megawatts; a second phase would add 12 more data halls. Bitdeer says the campus would cost more than $300 million, employ 150 to 200 people, is not asking for tax breaks, and would bring in $2.17 million a year in real estate taxes from phase one.

Meetings have repeatedly drawn more people than Shalersville Town Hall can hold; at a June 16 town hall a room full of hands went up when one resident asked who opposed the data center. "We're about to celebrate 250 years. What does that mean if we can't say no?" one woman asked.

Noise is the sharpest dispute: Bitdeer says the campus would add 43 to 48 decibels at the nearest residential property lines behind sound walls, but trustee Jack Bias said the township has repeatedly asked for the source of those figures without an answer. In August the trustees hired an acoustics firm for $9,000 to measure the township's existing noise and critique any study the developer provides.

Only the Shalersville Township trustees can enact the zoning change; they hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. on October 6 at Shalersville Town Hall, and the Portage County Regional Planning Commission takes up competing conditions on October 14. The township's moratorium on data centers runs until early November, and trustees said in August they would extend it by six months if the noise study is not finished.