New Albany / Licking County, OH: the data center cluster

Highest single category reading anywhere in the index. New Albany is being actively exported as a template, and by the PRO-development side first, which then hands opponents their target. The city hosts bus tours for officials from other Ohio counties; the Van Wert and McDonald delegations both toured. Opponents then attack the template: 174 of 188 clean data center posts in this market's own corpus are about OTHER Ohio communities.

Public record 88 · Digital 85 · weight 12.4% · 50 evidence items

Best-documented category in the ring and adjudicated rather than alleged. Pataskala and Granville both have data center prohibition charter amendments certified to the 3 November 2026 ballot; Pataskala P&Z rejected the Aligned application 3 June 2026 and Council rejected the site plan 26 August. Two unanimous Ohio Supreme Court rulings in one month forced data center questions onto ballots (Ashville 6-0, Trenton). In New Albany proper the equivalent reading is 22: a unanimous unopposed 1,689-acre annexation, with process friction exported to Jersey Township whose trustees said on record they were powerless.

Public record 78 · Digital 76 · weight 13.7% · 55 evidence items

Strongest evidenced statewide category. AEP tariff case 24-0508 (85% minimum bill) exists BECAUSE of this cluster, and the hyperscalers fought it and lost. Bills run $42/mo above 2021 and the Ohio Consumers' Counsel projects a further +$10.28/mo by 2028. A 2,500-signature petition was filed in the rate case; Columbus City Schools and Columbus City Council both intervened. New Albany residents pay it too but have not organized around it.

Public record 72 · Digital 71 · weight 11.9% · 48 evidence items

The ring's strongest argument, and it was handed to them by Intel rather than by data centers. Local template: 'Promises made but promises not kept.' Hard numbers on record: AWS = 105 permanent jobs for $3.5B; Google Columbus = $54M abatement for 20 projected jobs; roughly $1.1M in tax breaks per job. The counter-evidence is real too: Chrysler pays $3.9M from one facility, and the business park produced about $59M in school revenue 1998-2015 against $5.7M from residential.

Public record 68 · Digital 76 · weight 10.4% · 42 evidence items

Suppressed in New Albany by non-disclosure rather than by absence of draw. Columbus supplies the cluster's 46 data centers within a 1.26 billion gal/yr aggregate that took a Columbus Dispatch records campaign to extract, and MORPC documents subsidence risk across Licking County. In the ring it is live in testimony (aquifers, private wells, PFAS) and central to Prairie Township's Big Darby fight. New Albany's own reading is 18.

Public record 52 · Digital 100 · weight 7.0% · 28 evidence items

New Albany has no rural character left to defend, and that is the point: its own reading is 10. In the ring: the Jersey Township annexation, the Big Darby Accord conflict in Prairie Township, farmland conversion, Ohio Farm Bureau engagement behind HB 646, and a farmland-construction ban as a statewide gubernatorial platform plank. Conserve Ohio's leadership is rural Appalachian.

Public record 58 · Digital 50 · weight 7.5% · 30 evidence items

Well evidenced and notably bipartisan. Framed in press as 'trillion-dollar tech companies'; Senate President Huffman (R) opposes exemptions for 'multi-billion-dollar corporations.' Aligned's UAE/Nvidia/Microsoft/BlackRock/xAI ownership was used against it in Pataskala. Google negotiated New Albany as 'Montauk Innovations' and Meta as 'Sidecat LLC': the shell naming reads locally as deception.

Public record 62 · Digital 36 · weight 6.5% · 26 evidence items

Present but usually instrumental: AI framing rides on utility and water arguments rather than standing alone. Purest instance is from Ravenna, not this market: 'a drop of clean water for a Ravenna child is worth more than a billion AI-generated images.' Meta's Prometheus supercluster branding gives the ring an explicit AI target. Not a primary driver here.

Public record 32 · Digital 59 · weight 4.0% · 16 evidence items

StopOhioDataCenters itself concedes an 'absence of documented NDA controversies' in Licking County, which is an unusually honest opposition statement and is reported as such. But Google negotiated as 'Montauk Innovations' and Meta as 'Sidecat LLC'; outside counsel advised that 'limiting the information you provide is the optimal solution'; and the Dispatch needed months of records requests for aggregate water. Statewide there are 16 NDAs on record and an Open Meetings Act suit filed 3 Sep 2026. The secrecy here is structural rather than contractual-and-exposed.

Public record 48 · Digital 20 · weight 5.0% · 20 evidence items

The Big Darby Accord in Prairie Township is a genuine, specific conservation-instrument conflict rather than a generic land objection. Save Ohio Parks testified; the Ohio Farm Bureau backed HB 646. Farmland conversion is the ring's animating land issue. In New Albany proper the business park is marketed on 'stream corridors and mature trees' and no conservation fight was found.

Public record 45 · Digital 19 · weight 4.5% · 18 evidence items

No health complaint record in New Albany. In the ring, Ken Apacki of Granville deployed 24 SimpleAQ monitors at schools, fire stations and nursing homes from spring 2025, explicitly 'challenging industry, not just Intel, but all these data centers,' with placement help from an OSU researcher. This is baseline-establishing, NOT documented harm, and is scored as such.

Public record 38 · Digital 28 · weight 3.5% · 14 evidence items

Two-sided and unusually well documented on both sides. Pro: the park produced about $59M in school revenue 1998-2015 versus $5.7M from residential, the city shares income tax in lieu of abated property tax, and Microsoft declined abatements at Heath/Hebron. Con: the mayor names school fiscal sustainability as the community's biggest challenge, Southwest Licking has three money issues on the same 3 November ballot as the data center bans, and Columbus City Schools intervened against AEP.

Public record 35 · Digital 29 · weight 4.0% · 16 evidence items

New Albany's own claim is four complaints in 15 years: city-sourced and uncorroborated, but uncontradicted. A visiting Van Wert police chief: 'Your average drone is louder.' In the ring, Pataskala's 84 cooling units drew specific objection and a resident made a Sandusky site visit to listen. Sierra Club names the region but supplies no decibel data.

Public record 40 · Digital 11 · weight 3.7% · 15 evidence items

About 25,000 construction workers on site is a real, large and under-discussed impact, and the visiting Van Wert delegation was told construction traffic is the primary concern during buildout. Named as a top-three concern at Prairie Township's 100-person meeting. No organized traffic campaign anywhere in the market.

Public record 30 · Digital 20 · weight 3.0% · 12 evidence items

Evidence cuts AGAINST the opposition, which is rare enough to state plainly. A GMU Center for Regional Analysis study (Aug 2025) found proximity to data centers correlated with HIGHER prices. A Sotheby's agent reports New Albany/Licking demand and values surged over five years, though that is a compound Intel-plus-data center effect. A visiting mayor after touring: 'One thing you did not see was For Sale signs.' No Ohio property-specific valuation study exists.

Public record 35 · Digital 0 · weight 3.0% · 12 evidence items