Ravenna City Council rushes to block potential data center proposal

When the topic is data centers, Ravenna city officials seem split. Local administrators say a proposal to site a data center within city limits is no big deal, but City Council’s planning committee is racing to impose a one-year moratorium on such facilities.

At issue is local landowner Ray Harner’s apparent plan to use his property on state Route 14, across from UH Portage Medical Center, as a data center. Harner declined comment.

Since Ravenna’s zoning code doesn’t specifically address data centers, the city’s planning commission has no reason to outright deny anyone’s application for a data center, said Carmen Laudato, council member and planning committee chairperson.

Laudato heads Ravenna City Council’s three-member planning committee, which on April 10 agreed to forward the moratorium proposal to council for codification into local law. Council is set to do exactly that on April 20, a week before the planning commission’s April 27 meeting.

Though Harner has never specified when he intends to do so, Laudato said he has voiced his intent to obtain a conditional use permit that would allow him to establish a data center on his property.

The committee wants to beat him — and anyone else with similar intentions — to the punch. Data centers, Laudato said, are not appropriate for Ravenna.

“We need to put a hard stop on anything of this nature until there's guardrails up so we can do it safely,” she said. “It’s just irresponsible to bring this in under a conditional use process.”

If City Council approves the moratorium before the planning commission declares that data centers are an allowable conditional use, Harner — and anyone else wishing to site a data center within city limits — will just have to wait, Laudato said.

Laudato said she is “alarmed” that council members knew nothing about the data center proposal. She said she only learned about it April 7, when she happened to overhear a conversation while she was in City Hall.

City Economic Development Director Dennis West said council hadn’t been apprised because neither Harner nor anyone else had brought him a formal proposal. The talks, he said, have always been just that: talks.

The city’s administration has no problem with Harner or anyone else outfitting their buildings to support small data centers, West said. Whoever would be operating it would be hoping to attract local businesses that don’t want the expense of having their own large server database on site.

“Sometimes it makes sense to do third party data storage,” he said. “So they look for these data centers, and that's the type of data centers that would probably come to Ravenna. So we're not going to get the big ones. We would get the small ones that are looking for companies in the area who need a data backup service.”

Judging by the feedback she’s heard, Laudato said Ravenna residents don’t care who greenlights or blocks data centers, or what kind they are. They just don't want one.

“They're going to blame council. They're going to say, ‘Why didn't you do something?
Why didn't you put something in place?’ They're going to blame us," she said.

Water

City Engineer Bob Finney disagrees with West’s assessment that Ravenna has the necessary water resources to support a facility such as the one Harner proposes. During the planning committee’s April 13 meeting, Finney told planning committee members that he’d met with other city administrators and Harner on April 6.

“I told the owner of the building specifically we would never commit a certain amount of water for cooling. We would never guarantee 100% of the time you’re going to get X amount of water. We have shutdowns, we have water breaks, that sort of thing,” he said.

When Finney advised Harner’s team they’d better have a back-up plan for cooling their servers, he was told they had a different method in mind. What that method might be, Finney could not say.

Should even a small data center be sited in Ravenna, Laudato said the city would need to upgrade its water treatment plant and possibly need another water tower. Both are impossibly expensive propositions, she said.

Electricity

Finney also told The Portager he wants more than FirstEnergy’s verbal assurances that the utility will commit to providing 22 kilowatts of power above the 10 kilowatts Harner’s own substation can generate. 

“I went further and told Ray we need to see that in writing from FirstEnergy,” he said.

Laudato remains convinced that any power commitment will raise people’s utility bills.

“With this level of usage on the overall power grid, it is going to raise people's rates,” she said. “Bottom line, there's no if, ands or buts about it: even if they have their own substation, it is still a stress on the power grid.”

Noise

City officials also disagree as to the noise even a small data center might produce. Rubber City Data already operates a 500+ server Bitcoin mining facility in the former GE plant. West said it’s never presented a noise problem, and he doesn’t anticipate a second one would, either.

Finney, though, said noise concerns are valid.

“Allegedly, there is just a buzz and a hum continually. Low frequency is an issue most people don’t realize. That's definitely something that needs explored,” Finney said.

Ideally, before city administrators or City Council reach a decision, Finney said he’d like to stand outside a small data center and see and hear for himself.

Laudato insists that data centers and Bitcoin mining operations are entirely different enterprises. Bitcoin operations are much smaller in scale and don’t have the same water and power demands that data centers do, she said.

“It all depends on how big a data center is,” West said. “It depends on the size and what the intent is. We don’t know water usage; we don't know anything.”

Jobs

Laudato and planning committee member Amy Michael also dismissed West’s suggestion that a proposal such as Harner’s would produce a small number of six-figure income jobs.

“One thing that everyone can agree on with data centers is that they don't bring in jobs. They bring in very few jobs for the trade-off that you're looking at,” Laudato said.

Michael asked if the existence of a Bitcoin mining facility in the city means Ravenna must allow “more and more and stronger and stronger” such enterprises. Answering her own question, she said, “No.”

Michael also suggested that Harner’s isn't the only land that may be targeted for data centers. She pointed to nearby property along state Route 14, land along Lake Street and land Ravenna township owns. Any such facility could affect anyone who uses well water, she said.

“We do not have currently the capacity to support, nor am I willing to risk, the long-term effects,” she said. “I don't trust anyone with billions of dollars coming to our small town, especially when others have turned them away. We're not here for anyone to get rich off our quality of life.”