Across the road from Patty Spillman’s Ohio farm, a proposed data center threatened to change a landscape her husband’s family has worked since 1861. The plan also brought neighbors from different political parties together to try to stop it.
Spillman and her husband grow corn, soybeans and wheat on more than 400 acres in central Ohio. In 2023, residents fought off an earlier proposal for a data center nearby. Spillman suspected the idea would return. Less than two years later, Texas-based developer Headwaters began advancing plans for a much larger facility on land across from her farm. The project would have covered more than 300 acres in Grove City and required land in Pleasant and Jackson townships to be annexed.
The dispute reflects a growing concern in communities across the United States. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has increased demand for data centers, which use large amounts of electricity and water. Residents in many places are asking for a say in where these facilities go, and for developers to pay the full cost of local needs, such as upgrades to the power grid. Some are calling for temporary bans on new projects.
In Grove City, a Republican-leaning suburb of Columbus, opposition crossed party lines. Republicans, Democrats and Independents joined the effort against Headwaters’ proposal. A poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that very few people want an artificial intelligence data center in their community, though the source article gives no exact percentage.
Jen Belt, a registered Democrat and one of four people behind the group Protect Grove City, said many residents did not know about the proposal at first. Organizers taped flyers to every home within three miles of the site and urged people to attend council meetings. They also collected signatures for an online petition encouraging the city council to pass a moratorium, or temporary pause, on data center development. More than 4,000 people signed.
The campaign helped win a one-year moratorium from Grove City’s council in June. Pleasant and Jackson townships had already passed their own moratoriums in the first half of 2026. But the city pause is temporary, and residents expect developers may return when it ends.
That is why Belt and her neighbors are seeking a longer-term rule. They placed a Community Consent Amendment on the upcoming November ballot. If voters approve it, residents would have to give their approval before large-scale development could begin. Although the proposal grew from concern about data centers, it is written to cover all heavy industry.
The effort shows how a local fight over land, water and power can create common ground even when national politics often divides people. UCLA public policy professor Megan Mullin says land-use disputes have long brought residents together across party lines. What is different now, she says, is that many such fights are happening at once, linking local campaigns into a wider movement.
For Spillman and her neighbors, the next test will be whether voters choose to make community approval part of the rules. Their campaign has already turned a little-known development plan into a public question: who should have a say when a project could reshape a community’s land and resources?