On the site of the old McDonald Steel plant in Trumbull County, developers are negotiating what could become a $1 billion data center spanning more than 1 million square feet, and the village that would host it has hit pause while it figures out what to do about it. The project has turned into a flashpoint for a broader fight playing out across Ohio over who benefits, who pays, and who gets a say when tech companies come looking for old industrial land.
Four Mahoning Valley voters aired those tensions in a recent conversation hosted by journalist Amy Eddings at Ideastream's Playhouse Square studios, as part of a continuing series called A Slice of Politics, according to Ideastream. The series previously convened in 2024 at a Warren pizzeria, in the Trumbull County seat that has seen steel mills close, industries leave, and residents move away for better opportunities, per the same outlet's reporting. Julie Stout, who grew up in McDonald and now lives elsewhere in Trumbull County, told the group she does not feel McDonald residents have any say in whether a data center gets built on the former U.S. Steel property, and she warned that residents stand to lose property value as a result.
What Developers Have Proposed So Far
The scale of what is being discussed for the McDonald site is substantial. Applied Partners is in the process of assembling 350 acres there, and the construction phase alone could take roughly four to five years, employing about 350 trade workers during the build and 35 to 75 full-time workers once the facility is running, according to Business Journal Daily. Separately, developer Oppidan has discussed plans for eight to 12 data centers and two to four administrative buildings on the same property, as reported by The Vindicator in its coverage of the village's response.
The property's sale has been reported with conflicting figures: Business Journal Daily reported that the land and 650,000-square-foot plant sold to Allied Partners in July 2024 for $3.25 million, while WKBN reported the buyer was Applied Partners LLC, which purchased the site for $3.2 million across three parcels including the 650,000-square-foot facility. Business Journal Daily has reported demolition and redevelopment activity at the site.
McDonald Hits the Brakes With a Moratorium
McDonald Village Council voted 5-0 to impose a one-year moratorium on data centers, with one council member absent for the vote, per the Vindicator's reporting on the ordinance. During the moratorium, the village will not accept, process or consider any data-center applications, giving the planning commission, council and administration time to review the projects and update zoning ordinances — a window that can run up to 12 months but may end sooner if council chooses.
Mayor Ray Lewis has said he would not support a data-center project in the village without a community-benefit agreement in place, according to WFMJ. That station's report notes that other Ohio communities have landed deals that included a $300,000 commitment to an aquaponic learning center, a $165 million community-benefits package and a $15 million upfront payment — examples that give a sense of the range developers elsewhere have offered.
Residents Press for Independent Review
Residents have raised concerns about noise and air and water pollution around a sprawling data-center campus. Stout's concerns echoed those worries in the Ideastream conversation, where she argued McDonald residents have been left out of a decision that could reshape their community.
Not everyone at the table saw it that way. Michael Scharfenberg, who lives in Mahoning County, argued that Ohio is well suited for this kind of development because it has so many former mills and industrial sites sitting available, and he said a large data center uses no more electricity than a large steel mill or machining plant once did. He told the group he would rather see a plant with 100 well-paid employees than one with 10 minimum-wage jobs, and he urged residents frustrated with the process to call their representatives if they want lawmakers to reconsider how these deals get done.
The Tax-Break Fight in Columbus
Looming over the local debate is a statewide one over how much Ohio is giving up to land these projects. Scharfenberg noted that Ohio offers tax breaks to essentially any company willing to build in the state, and he estimated the scale of the break at roughly 1% of Ohio's GDP. Ohio's sales tax exemptions for data centers — which apply to construction materials and hardware — cost the state just under $1.6 billion in revenue in the prior year, exceeding the state's own revenue estimate by a factor of 11, according to the Ideastream conversation. Governor Mike DeWine has since paused tax breaks for new applications while defending the existing incentives as having attracted major technology investments that might otherwise have gone elsewhere, per that same account.
Riley DeCavitch, who also lives in Trumbull County, argued that data-center deals get concealed in the first place because people are financially benefiting from keeping them quiet, and Eddings noted in the discussion that some communities sign nondisclosure agreements while negotiating with companies like Google or Amazon — agreements that can keep residents in the dark until a city council vote and a completed deal are already behind them. DeCavitch said data centers should pay the full cost of the electricity they use, arguing that otherwise the costs get shifted onto other customers through higher electricity and gas bills, and proposed pausing construction altogether to assess what is actually being built and why. Paul Ringold, a third Trumbull County voter in the conversation, took a narrower stance: he said data centers should pay a share of maintaining the public electric grid, but he also warned that if too many projects seek incentives at the same time, the tax breaks themselves could become unaffordable for the state.
What the Numbers Say Statewide
A Scioto Analysis cost-benefit study estimates that higher electricity prices tied to data centers could cost Ohio ratepayers $16 billion between 2027 and 2034, though cleveland.com cautions that figure is a model output rather than a direct forecast of how much individual electric bills will rise, and notes the published material alone does not allow an independent reproduction of the total.
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has already moved to shield other ratepayers, issuing an order directing AEP Ohio to implement measures intended to protect customers from potentially being affected by data-center customers' effect on energy prices, according to the commission. Meanwhile, the fight over how much local say communities should have is playing out at the ballot box: voters in 18 Ohio communities are weighing measures to limit or ban data centers this November, including 11 proposed charter amendments, per cleveland.com's reporting. In nearby Lordstown, village council already voted unanimously to ban all future data centers outright, even as a $3.6 billion project was separately proposed there, expected to employ 1,300 construction workers and 130 full-time workers once built.
Data Center Proposals Expand Across Ohio
Amazon, for its part, has proposed a separate $2 billion data center in Sunbury, Ohio — one more sign of how quickly the industry is expanding statewide even as communities debate how to regulate it.
Back in McDonald, the moratorium's passage has left the future of the old steel property unresolved for now. For Stout and her neighbors, the uncertainty is itself part of the complaint — a sense, as she put it to Ideastream, that the decision over what gets built on land she once called home is happening somewhere she cannot reach.
