Construction apprenticeships have grown 68% over the last decade and more than 25,000 construction workers are in New Albany every day because of data center growth, a trades group and a local government official told an Ohio Statehouse committee studying data centers.
Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s Community Development Director, spent more than an hour on June 8 giving wide-ranging testimony before a bipartisan Ohio legislature committee studying data centers about all the ways the industry has transformed the northeast Columbus suburb.
New Albany is home to 40 data centers from 15 different companies, with about 28 more data centers in development, Chrysler said. Central Ohio has 137 of the 232 data centers throughout the Buckeye State, according to the global data center directory Data Center Map.
Chrysler said there are more than 25,000 construction jobs in New Albany thanks to data center construction, with 9,000 of those jobs on the Meta data center site alone as Facebook’s parent company continues to expand its 766-acre Beech Road campus.
One hyperscale data center alone generated $3.9 million in tax revenue for New Albany in 2024, Chrysler said, through a complex formula the city developed that standardizes economic development incentives and accounts for how much revenue a property would have generated if developed by another industry.
The city then turns around and uses funds from the hyperscale data centers to invest in infrastructure that allows for more economic development, including international biotech companies like Amgen and Pharmavite.
“We were able to unlock thousands of acres within the business that wouldn’t otherwise be available for development,” she said.
Data centers house servers that are the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom. But they have faced criticism about their drain on local resources, including the amount of power and water they require. Residents across the state are pushing back against data center developments in their communities, and a growing number of local governments have enacted moratoriums to pause data center developments.
A grassroots group is collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment that would ban large data centers, although advocates face a long road to the ballot.
As pushback against the industry grows, Gov. Mike DeWine on May 27 paused a controversial sales tax break for data centers that cost nearly $1.6 billion last year.
Skilled trades workforce growing because of data center construction demand
Matt Szollosi, executive director of Affiliated Construction Trades, echoed Chrysler’s comments about construction jobs created by data centers, saying the data center industry has created thousands of middle-class jobs with good wages, health insurance and retirement benefits that have transformed the lives of workers across the state.
“Our message is don’t fall prey to the false reality being perpetuated by social media influencers that data centers don’t create jobs,” he said.
Szollosi said the total number of construction apprenticeships has grown 68% overall, and there are four times as many women in the programs compared to 2016 with much of the increase attributed to the demand driven by data center construction.
“In order to keep winning, we have to stay competitive,” Szollosi said. “We cannot go backwards.”
Economic development would be hindered by eliminating NDAs
The committee has focused on whether nondisclosures are important to the economic development process after residents testified on June 1 that they contribute to a lack of information about data centers in their own communities. Some state lawmakers have introduced legislation seeking to prevent local public officials from entering into such agreements.
Chrysler said New Albany officials never sign NDAs provided by any company or site selector. Instead, the city has its own NDA template that outlines Ohio law and shares what information the city will publicly disclose. In addition, no elected officials sign NDAs and the city manager signs on behalf of city staff, she said.
Without NDAs, Chrysler said economic development will be “severely hindered” in Ohio because local officials would no longer have a seat at the negotiating table with any company.
“We don’t want other people negotiating on our behalf with companies,” she said.
Last week, a Microsoft official told the committee it will no longer use NDAs – or seek local property tax abatements – as it develops data centers in Ohio. But representatives from Google, Amazon and Meta, did not make similar promises.
The June 8 meeting was the fourth held by the legislature’s Select Committee on Data Centers. It previously heard from state agencies, including the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources on May 27; dozens of Ohio residents on June 1 as they aired their grievances about the booming industry and urged legislators to consider a statewide moratorium; and multiple data center companies, including Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, on June 4.
The committee will meet again on June 11, when other companies associated with the data center industry will speak before the committee.
Delaware County and eastern Columbus suburbs reporter Maria DeVito can be reached at mdevito@dispatch.com and @mariadevito13.dispatch.com on Bluesky and @MariaDeVito13 on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Albany touts jobs, revenue as data center pushback grows
Reporting by Maria DeVito, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Maria DeVito, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
