Microsoft has quietly added to its growing pile of land in Pataskala, pushing its total holdings across Licking County past 700 acres, even as the tech giant's own timeline for building data centers there has zigzagged for more than a year. The company describes its data-center plan as advancing responsibly, according to Columbus Business First, but the on-the-ground picture in Licking County has been anything but a straight line.
A Pattern of Purchases Going Back to 2023
The latest acquisition continues a buying spree that stretches back to October 2023, when Microsoft bought 289 acres in Pataskala for $30.7 million, according to Baxtel. That deal covered three parcels on Refugee Road Southwest sold by Ronald E. Kissell Et al., with the land described as sitting next to a solar-panel manufacturing facility under construction by Invenergy. Baxtel cited the Licking County Recorder in putting the combined size of those three lots at 289.37 acres, while NBC4 has separately reported the figure as 291 acres.
Microsoft kept buying. In November 2024, the company purchased another 43 acres in Pataskala for $11.4 million, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. That report framed the purchase as part of Microsoft's broader plan to invest $1 billion in three data-center campuses across Licking County. Microsoft also spent more than $32 million on 227 acres at 975 Thornwood Drive in Heath, according to NBC4, which reports the company's total land bought in the county has surpassed 700 acres.
A Billion-Dollar Plan With an Uncertain Timeline
That $1 billion investment, first announced in October 2024, was always framed as three campuses spread across New Albany, Heath and Hebron, per Data Center Dynamics. But the project's status has shifted repeatedly since then. In April 2025, Microsoft told NBC4, “After careful consideration, we will not be moving forward at this time with our plans to build data centers at the Licking County sites,” referring to planned facilities off Thornwood Drive in Heath and off High Street in Hebron. Data Center Dynamics has also reported that Microsoft paused its plans to build data centers in the county altogether, while NBC4 separately reported that Microsoft began construction on two Licking County data centers at those same Heath and Hebron sites. The company has told Data Center Dynamics it will continue to own the land and intends to proceed with development at some unspecified point in the future, framing the moves as part of a broader strategy of slowing or pausing some early-stage projects while aligning investments with business priorities and customer demand.
Tech Boom Collides With Growing Local Pushback
Microsoft's expansion is unfolding against the backdrop of a broader tech buildout that Licking County officials trace to Intel's 2022 arrival in the region, per NBC4's reporting. The county is now home to 50 data centers and six proposed power plants meant to serve them, with one plant already operating, according to a report examining the region's power debate. Companies including Amazon Data Services, DBT Data New Albany and Google have also built or expanded data centers in the area, NBC4 notes.
That growth has come with friction. A report published Thursday in the Ohio Capital Journal notes that a proposed plant called PowerConneX 3 would become the seventh gas-fired power plant built to serve data centers in the New Albany International Business Park, if approved. Together, those seven plants would have a combined capacity of 1,936 megawatts and the potential to emit 11.9 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution and 766 tons of fine particulate matter annually, the outlet reported. A separate 450-megawatt plant, the PowerConneX New Albany 3 Energy Center, has been proposed on roughly 30 acres to directly power a data center on the same site, according to the Kentucky.com report.
Ohio's Data-Center Boom Extends South
The scale of the buildout extends well beyond Licking County. In Pike County, a facility known as the PORTS Technology Campus is under construction in Piketon and expected to be leased to OpenAI, with SB Energy overseeing construction and retaining ownership of the site, according to WLWT. That project's first phase is targeted to come online by 2028, with full buildout expected by 2032. The contrast underscores just how much uncertainty still surrounds Microsoft's own Licking County timeline, even as the company keeps adding acreage to its holdings there.
