SHALERSVILLE, Ohio — Hundreds of Portage County residents packed a community informational meeting Friday to learn about — and push back against — a proposed data center campus just north of the Ohio Turnpike.
On Wednesday, News 5 reported that Bitdeer has a contract to buy about 257 acres at the Turnpike Commerce Center in Shalersville Township. The publicly traded company, based in Singapore, aims to fill much of that site with a 15-building computing hub to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence.
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The company is partnering with Streetsboro-based Geis Development, part of a family-owned real estate and construction business, on what is expected to be Bitdeer's largest facility in the United States.
Friday's event, which took place inside a massive warehouse at the business park, featured signs highlighting and addressing common concerns about data centers, ranging from water and power use to noise. Employees from Geis and Bitdeer were there to talk directly with residents.
Among those in attendance was Nancy Caldwell, who lives next door to the proposed development site.
She told News 5 she had already come to terms with development at the sprawling business park, where a German plumbing-parts manufacturer opened a plant last year, and the 1 million-square-foot warehouse is being marketed for distribution and logistics. But Caldwell believes those projects won't have the same impact on her property as a data center.
"They are ugly, but they're not going to destroy our utilities, our water sources, the beautiful deer and turkey and all the wildlife we have living here," Caldwell said. "Factories won't destroy that, but data centers will."
The first phase of the project would span two data halls and a 51,500-square-foot office building at the southwestern end of the property.
A site plan shows 12 additional data halls in the second phase of the project.
"We don't want the big eyesores or the big mega-warehouses that people are complaining about AI data centers," Paul Hanson, Bitdeer's senior project manager, said during an interview with News 5 this week.
The entire campus could take about five years to build.
Bitdeer says construction will cost more than $300 million — but that doesn’t include the company’s equipment.
With a closed-loop cooling system that recycles liquid to keep the hardware inside from overheating, the first group of buildings would use only 350 gallons of water a day, Hanson said. That’s less than the typical American household uses.
Geis already worked with the county to bring water and sewer lines to the business park. The project won't involve any wells.
Bitdeer is not seeking any tax breaks for the project.
Shalersville, with roughly 5,000 residents, has a moratorium on data centers that doesn’t end until early November. That temporary development pause would need to expire or be lifted for Geis and Bitdeer to move forward.
"Right now, I think there’s a lot of communities that are putting moratoriums out there to fully understand what a data center is, and I’m hoping that these communities will take those times to actually investigate both pros and cons," Hanson said during an interview.
State Rep. Heidi Workman, a Rootstown Republican who sits on the General Assembly's recently launched joint committee on data centers, attended the informational open house. She told News 5 this week that she isn't taking a stance on the Bitdeer project yet.
"The concerns of the communities are warranted," she said of the debate over data centers. "The concerns we're hearing are related to water supply, power supply, cost shifting, tax benefits. These need to be explored, understood — and where do we go from here."
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"Responsible data center development can be done," Conrad Geis, president of Geis Development, told News 5 this week, stressing that his team and Bitdeer hope to answer people's questions and work with the community to make sure there are guardrails in place.
For Caldwell, there are still plenty of questions about what comes next for her community and her family, as she pushes back against the development.
"The sad part is, where do we go from here?" she asked.
She told News 5 her family will likely consider moving if the project gets built.
"If they put the data centers in, we don't have a choice," Caldwell said.
Geis Development and Bitdeer are scheduled to make a presentation to the Shalersville Township trustees at a public meeting on June 16 at 5:30 p.m., at the township hall.
No decisions or public approvals have been made yet.
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard, on Facebook ClayLePardTV or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com.
News 5 business reporter Michelle Jarboe contributed to this story.
