AMHERST, Ohio — A proposed data center in Lorain County hit a major roadblock Thursday, when Amherst’s Board of Zoning Appeals rejected the developer’s request for a use variance.
The board released its decision less than 24 hours after a hearing at Amherst City Hall. More than 100 people showed up, packing the building and spilling out onto the lawn and around the block.
Dozens of them spoke, protesting a developer’s proposal to turn part of the longtime Nordson Corporation campus into a high-tech hub for data processing and storage.
Now Cervenka Development Partners LLC will have to decide whether to walk away — or to file an appeal in Lorain County Common Pleas Court. Tom Cervenka, a principal at the Illinois-based company, did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.
“The board has spoken. The people have spoken,” Mayor Mark Costilow said during a phone interview Thursday afternoon.
“If it does come to a court hearing,” he added, “the city will defend its position.”
That position is that data centers aren’t explicitly allowed by Amherst’s industrial zoning code — so they require a use variance. In a written decision, the zoning board said Cervenka failed to make a convincing argument that the city should grant an exception to the rules.
Today, the Nordson campus is a mix of manufacturing space, labs and offices.
The publicly traded company, based in Westlake, is gradually leaving Amherst. Old manufacturing buildings at the southern end of the campus already are sitting empty. They’re set to be demolished. Nordson and the city are discussing the future of that land.
Meanwhile, Nordson is marketing three newer buildings, to the north, for sale. That’s the property Cervenka has been eyeing. The developer’s proposal calls for converting those buildings, which share utilities and other infrastructure, into a data center complex.
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During Wednesday night's meeting, Cervenka argued that the configuration of the buildings, designed specifically for Nordson, would make it tough for another manufacturer to move in. He said a data center would be a logical fit for the site.
“Am I gonna tell you that there is no other user that can use these buildings? No,” he acknowledged to board members. “There’s someone out there. Might take five, 10, 15 years to find them. Someone might come in and say, ‘You know what, we’re gonna bulldoze the whole thing. … We’re just gonna go class A warehouse, and we’re gonna run X number of trucks, every day, in and out. We’re so close to the highway. It’s a use by right.’ And I don’t think that’s fair to the residences that surround the area.”
Zoning board members seized on the first part of that comment, saying in a written decision that Cervenka undermined his own case. The board also didn’t buy the argument that limiting the property to uses that are spelled out in the zoning code will unreasonably hamper redevelopment or infringe on the property owner’s rights.
“These buildings went on the market in April,” board member John Jeffreys pointed out during the public hearing. “They haven’t been on the market very long. … Nordson’s a multibillion-dollar company. I’m sure they can keep them on the market for a while. They’ll be okay. I’m not gonna worry about their financial situation.”
Nordson, which is still using the buildings, was not involved with the zoning application. The developer requested the variance as part of a due diligence process, while weighing whether or not to buy the property.
Though Amherst’s industrial zoning code doesn’t include data centers as a permitted use, it doesn’t specifically prohibit them, either.
Cervenka mentioned that but didn’t emphasize it during Wednesday night’s meeting. Now he has 30 days to appeal the zoning board’s decision.
Neighbors, clearly, hope the developer will accept defeat and move on.
“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere within several miles of one of these things, quite frankly,” Logan Dutro, an IT systems administrator who lives in Amherst, told zoning board members during the public hearing.
Judy Heiser, another Amherst resident who spoke during the meeting, pointed out that the Nordson campus is flanked by homes.
“It’s a small community, and we love how it is,” Heiser said. “And we don’t need data centers and noise. We just don’t need it. All over the United States, people are fighting this. Why do they want to come to our little town?”
She urged city officials to consider changing Amherst’s zoning language to block data centers.
On Thursday, Costilow said it’s up to Amherst City Council to decide if it wants to put a moratorium on data center projects. But he believes the city’s existing laws are effective.
“We will continue to defend our codes and ordinances,” he said.
During 24 years in Amherst politics, Costilow said he’s only seen two other topics mobilize so many people. One was a battle over backyard chickens. The other was a fight over whether residents could park trailers in their driveways.
“I’m very proud of the community for coming out,” he said of the response to the data center proposal. “I’m very proud of how orderly everybody was.”
And at this point, the mayor added, “I’m not gonna support this project, myself.”
Michelle Jarboe is the business growth and development reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X
