Shalersville Town Hall housed a more than standing-room-only crowd June 16 as area residents fired questions at Geis Companies and Bitdeer Technologies Group brass and sometimes lobbed accusations at the township trustees.
At issue is a not-yet-officially proposed data center campus Bitdeer wants to build on just over 150 acres Geis now owns at its Turnpike Commerce Center, located near Shalersville’s Ohio Turnpike interchange.
Bitdeer is a Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure company based in Singapore. Their bid to build a data center in Portage County comes amid a global push to expand computational capacity, strained by intensive use of large language models like ChatGPT or Gemini. Many communities in Ohio have pushed back against data center construction, and local Republican lawmakers have proposed outright bans.
Phase 1 of the project — two data center buildings and an office building — would be erected south of Beck Road, while Phase 2 is slated to go in north of Beck, behind a massive structure already on the property, Geis architect Brandon Kline said.
The township currently has a moratorium on data center development, but it expires Nov. 3, leaving the fate of the project uncertain.
Township Trustee Ron Kotkowski told The Portager that the township intends to have “something permanent” in place before the temporary moratorium expires, but what that will be is anyone’s guess.
The county prosecutor’s office, which represents townships, and a law firm the trustees privately hired have both advised them that an outright ban would not survive court scrutiny, Kotkowski told the crowd.
Onlookers angrily erupted when Kotkowski, township Trustee Frank Ruehr, Jr. and state Rep. Heidi Workman said the project could not simply be placed on the ballot for voters to approve or reject.
Residents want a chance to say no
Obstacle one is that neither Geis nor Bitdeer has applied to the township for the conditional use permit needed to proceed with the project, so there is nothing for the trustees to consider or to put on the ballot, Workman said.
Should a legal application be filed, the trustees could consider amending the township zoning code, which is currently silent on data centers, she said. That amendment could but does not need to be placed before voters.
Though residents can propose amendments to township zoning codes, most originate with the zoning commission or trustees. Such proposals advance to the county regional planning and prosecutor’s office, then are aired at public hearings. Township trustees have the final say, Zoning Commission Chairman Ben Kotkowski said.
However, Ohio law stipulates that, with enough valid residents’ signatures on a petition, a zoning amendment must be placed on the ballot. That’s where obstacle two comes in.
“If they would put that on the ballot, for stricter parameters around these kinds of developments, and the voters were able to vote against that amendment, we actually hurt even worse, because they wouldn't be able to make any stricter recommendations for data centers to comply with. They'd be stuck with the current zoning code if the voters voted against their amendment,” Workman said.
And, since the moratorium expires prior to the November election, that would leave the township worse off than it is now, Ruehr said.
Believing that residents want an opportunity to just say no to the project, Workman said she has her state-level policy and legal experts looking into what protections the community might have.
As it is, Ron Kotkowski said Geis and Bitdeer have every right to request that their project be approved as a conditional use on land that is already zoned for industrial use.
“We have to protect you and try to work something out where it protects everyone,” he said.
Should the campus be built, a conditional use permit guarantees that Bitdeer would have to comply with all conditions, both initially and moving forward. The trustees could close it down for non-compliance, and the Ohio EPA, which also would have monitoring rights, could demand a shutdown within hours if necessary, said Bitdeer Industrial Chairman and Senior Project Manager Paul Hanson.
Changing parameters
The project’s specs and parameters could well change as technology evolves, company representatives said. Already, the size of the proposed buildings has shifted from a 51,500-square-foot office building and 14 data centers each 48,000 square feet, to three 157,500-square-foot structures to be built within the first 34 months, and 12 more 636,000-square-foot buildings following in five years.
In other words, Bitdeer increased the proposed footprint of the campus by nearly 7.4 million square feet.
There would be no further changes in the size of the buildings, which are configured to fit the machinery within, Hanson said. However, as technology evolves, the amount of energy the facility draws could well decrease, he said.
Bitdeer officials said many of their projections are based on extrapolations from the company’s 32-acre Massillon campus, a much smaller installation that operates as a Bitcoin mining facility. The Shalersville facility would focus on generative AI, the tech behind ChatGPT, not bitcoin mining. It’s also larger than anything Bitdeer has ever done, so direct comparisons and projections — even the 150-200 full-time jobs they anticipate — are difficult, company officials said.
There’s no guarantee local people would fill the jobs, but those that do would receive on-the-job training to advance their skills. That, Hanson said, would upskill the workforce into the digital age.
Even so, “If I can’t get 150 people from Shalersville to come to work, we’ll bring them in,” Hanson told the crowd.
Water requirements unknown
Even at full build-out, the data campus’ total water requirement would be 3,000 gallons per day, well below the 250,000 GPD Portage County Water Resources has allocated for all of the Turnpike Commerce Center, company officials said.
The total volume of water needed is actually unknown and would be based on engineering estimates, Hanson said.
County Water Resources Director Dan Blakely previously stated the county could not accept any industrial wastewater from the data centers, but it could accept waste from the office building. And that, Bitdeer officials said, is the only wastewater the campus would generate.
Bitdeer would conduct “potential semi-annual partial system flushes” that would collect about 1,200 gallons of waste liquid, Hanson said. The waste fluid collected would be trucked off-site to a licensed refinery for recycling.
“Nothing is sent to the sewer or discharged into the ground,“ Hanson said, adding that should a leak occur, the offending unit would be shut down, the chemical contained, and all liquid would be trucked to an approved facility. The closed-loop system does not discharge wastewater into the municipal water system.
Kevin Noble, an engineer associated with the Bitdeer project, likened the facility’s closed-loop cooling system to a home air conditioning unit, only the data center’s pipes would be filled with propylene glycol.
“If you think you have your condenser outside, you feel your cold air inside, and you just have a loop going around. So that is a current system; that’s a current type of product that will be with this system,” Noble said.
No grid impact, company says
Bitdeer officials said the company would pay for everything needed to connect to the power grid: lines, a substation and equipment at no cost to the township or residents. They said the data center buildings wouldn’t impact the local grid and stated that township power and the facility’s power wouldn’t share the same wires.
Should there be a power outage, on-site backup generators powered by high-grade diesel fuel would kick in, they said. Local utility providers would not be expected to provide emergency power, and the facilities wouldn’t compete with residential homes for restoration priority in the event of a power outage.
'Why are you pushing so hard?'
Geis and Bitdeer representatives also did their best to address the crowd’s rapid-fire questions about audible and sub-audible noise, light pollution and other environmental concerns. Some of the questions came from an overflow crowd gathered at Town Hall’s open window, listening in and sometimes shouting comments as the meeting proceeded.
In a post-meeting interview with The Portager, Hanson said noise emanating from the campus would “meet or exceed” standards the township has set. At the property line, the noise level would be equivalent to “a quiet office, moderate rainfall, or a running refrigerator,” he said, emphasizing that such levels are considered safe for human hearing with no risk of permanent hearing loss.
Regarding fire risk, Hanson said in the post-meeting interview that each data center building would be outfitted with “a pre-action water sprinkler fire suppression system specifically designed to manage fire risk in this type of facility.” Bitdeer would offer the Mantua-Shalersville Fire Department on-site tours and safety systems briefings “to proactively prepare for any emergency response,” he said.
A Streetsboro resident asked what being an American means “if people can’t say they don’t want it.” Alarmed at the project’s possible environmental impact, a woman whose property abuts the proposed campus asked, “How can you guarantee my dad’s going to be OK?”
An unidentified resident, her voice shaking with emotion as the crowd loudly expressed its support, asked, “Why are you pushing so hard to be in a community that does not want you here?” Another received a near-unanimous response when she called for people who didn’t want the campus to be built to raise their hands.
Company officials did not respond when an audience member, identified only as Terry from Edinburg, asked how Bitdeer would protect the information it gathers. The data center could serve as a one-stop shop for scammers, she suggested.
Sounding resigned, an unidentified male resident asked if Shalersville residents should prepare themselves “for something that’s inevitable.”
Increased local revenue
Projecting increased property tax revenue from the developed land, Hanson and other Bitdeer representatives projected massive revenue for Crestwood schools, the township and the local fire department.
The biggest beneficiaries, they claim, would be the Crestwood Local School District at about $3.77 million annually, the Mantua-Shalersville Fire Department at about $808,800 annually and Shalersville Township at about $449,123 annually.
Also benefiting would be county-level services, including mental health, developmental disability, child welfare and public health organizations as well as parks and library systems.
Hanson said the data center campus would likely be included in the Streetsboro-Shalersville JEDD, which funnels 65% of employees’ gross income tax receipts to the township. How much that could amount to remains unknown.
Bitdeer is not seeking and has not received any federal, state or local tax incentives, also known as tax abatements, to build the campus in Shalersville, Hanson said.
Trustees speak
Despite audience accusations that the trustees have known about the project for years, Ruehr said they didn’t know about it until May. They have not signed a non-disclosure agreement or any other paperwork with Bitdeer, he said. An NDA would be illegal anyway, he added.
Shalersville’s trustees are trying to negotiate the best deal they can, Ron Kotkowski said. Ruehr cautioned that a hasty decision “could come back to haunt us,” and he reiterated that the trustees are “struggling to get answers. Until that happens, “We can’t say ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’” he said.
The crowd shouted Ruehr down as he explained that, prior to the current board of trustees enacting the moratorium, Geis and Bitdeer could have had free rein with their project.
“We’re the ones that stopped it. We’re the ones that made it a conditional use,” he said as Ron Kotkowski begged for civility so people could continue to ask reasonable questions and receive reasonable answers.
“We are bound by the laws of the state. We’re up against something that is very overwhelming. We’re trying to work this out for our constituents. We’re not the enemy here,” Ron Kotkowski said. “We’re trying to negotiate. We’re trying to do the best we can, but in certain respects, our hands are tied.”
Responding to allegations that other communities have successfully approved data center bans, Ruehr said that’s easy to do when local elected officials know there is little to no land for such facilities.
“Unfortunately for us, we have a nice piece of property with availability to electric, and that makes it a nice piece of property for them,” he said, referring to Bitdeer.
To a crowd that had significantly dwindled during more than three hours of discussion, Hanson adopted a conciliatory tone.
“We like the property. We like the community. We’re sorry so many people are averse to us,” he said. “To us, this is a very good potential for our future, and we think it is a good future for you, as well.”
The crowd remained unconvinced, hooting and applauding when a Shalersville man identified as Gary told the Bitdeer and Geis officials, “You guys sound like a bunch of used car salesmen.”
Wendy DiAlesandro
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.