MT. ORAB, Ohio — Mt. Orab Planning Commission members presented their sweeping new "High Tech Overlay" (HTO) proposal governing high-tech business that could move into the village's industrially zoned land at a packed meeting Wednesday.
WATCH: We talk with people opposed to data center construction in Mt. Orab:
The commission moved the meeting to the Mt. Orab First Baptist Church to accommodate the large crowd of people opposed to construction of a data center on industrial land once called the "mega site" on the southeast side of town.
During the meeting, Commissioner Shane Ogden confirmed a company named DB STU LLC purchased the properties in that mega site with the intent of developing a data center before village council members scrapped the town's modern zoning codes and implemented a moratorium on data center construction.
At the end of Wednesday's meeting, the final public speaker turned to the crowd and asked who was against construction of a data center in Mt. Orab.
Every hand in the crowd went up.
Southern Ohio Responsible Development President Anthony Casbar said he was initially opposed to development of the mega site because village council members and administrators had signed non-disclosure agreements banning them from talking about the project.
"I've been in it since the beginning. Since day one," he said.
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Casbar told us he has since watched as the rumor of a data center on the site lit a fire under many in the community to fight the project.
Commissioner Mike Kirk told the crowd after presenting the new rules that he believed there was no way to permanently ban a data center in town, and the rules he developed were designed to protect people in town.
"To me, the cat is already out of the bag," Kirk said. "There's folks working to stop this in other ways, but putting the high-tech overlay is a way; if it's a clean energy, communication, data center, server farms, whatever you want to call it, these high-tech companies, it's a way to at least block them into an area and put tighter restrictions on them."
Kirk said the rules he drafted increased setbacks from residential properties, banned traffic intake from residential roadways, reduced building height, lowered acceptable noise levels, limited generator load testing hours, increased landscaping and screening requirements and added architectural standards over previous zoning rules.
The full draft rules would be placed on the village's website.
Many in the crowd argued that when council scrapped the 2024 zoning codes, it set the village's zoning codes back to ones passed in the 1960s, well before data centers were conceived of, and, therefore, the codes wouldn't allow for their construction. Others said passing the HTO would open the door for data centers.
Mt. Orab Data Center Committee member Wayne Reveal told council they needed to get a legal ruling on what a developer could do under current industrial zoning rules before taking any action.
"We need that legal opinion, and we need it now," he said.
Commissioner Ogden said village administrators would meet Monday to incorporate public comment from Wednesday's meeting into a more formal draft. Another public hearing would be called before the commission voted to pass a finalized draft to Village Council for consideration.
