By 1808Delaware
Across Delaware County and the northern edge of Franklin County, the signs are already visible. Survey stakes in farm fields. New road alignments. Utility work that seems oversized for what used to be quiet stretches of countryside. And now, in Columbus, a fast-moving piece of legislation that acknowledges something residents here have sensed for months.
Ohio House Bill 646 is not about whether data centers are coming. It is about what happens when they arrive faster than the rules meant to guide them. The bill, introduced in January 2026, would create a 13-member Ohio Data Center Study Commission charged with answering a simple but urgent question: how should the state manage an industry that is reshaping land use, infrastructure, and community life from Sunbury to Lewis Center to the Polaris corridor.
And it would do so quickly. HB 646 is written as an emergency measure, meaning it would take effect immediately upon passage, with the commission required to report its findings within six months. That timeline alone tells you how seriously lawmakers are taking what is unfolding on the ground.
What the State Is Trying to Understand
HB 646 directs the commission to examine issues that sound very familiar to people in this part of Ohio. Where should data centers go? On farmland? On greenfields? Or should they be pushed toward brownfields and existing industrial sites? What do they mean for water systems, electric grid capacity, traffic, noise, and emergency response?
How do they affect the tax base and workforce? And how do local governments make decisions when information is inconsistent, politicized, or, as the bill notes, influenced by outside narratives and misinformation?
The commission must hold at least four public meetings, including two for public testimony. That means residents, local officials, and industry voices will all have a formal platform to shape what becomes the state’s first coordinated look at data center policy. By design, the commission will dissolve after delivering its report. This is meant to be fast, focused, and consequential.
Why This Matters Here
This is not theoretical in Delaware County or the north side of the Columbus metro.
In Sunbury, Amazon Web Services is planning a 450,000-square-foot data center as part of a roughly 2-billion-dollar campus investment at the Sunbury Business and Technology Park. The broader campus is described as an anchor for nearly 1,300 acres of newly annexed limited-industrial land. Construction is projected to begin in 2028 and stretch into the next decade.
In Lewis Center, Cologix has begun work on an approximately 1-billion-dollar AI-focused data center complex, supported by Community Reinvestment Area incentives and sales-tax exemptions on construction materials. The project builds on the company’s existing footprint near Crosswoods and is aimed squarely at the exploding demand from AI and hyperscale computing users.
Meanwhile, regional planning is already adjusting. A fourth major Columbus-area water plant is under development to help serve rising demand from Intel, data centers, and housing growth in the northwest quadrant of the metro, including parts of Delaware County.
Intel’s New Albany campus is expected to be one of the region’s largest water users. Data centers, with their evaporative cooling systems and enormous power draw, add another layer of complexity to long-term water and energy planning.
In other words, the infrastructure conversation is already happening. HB 646 is the state trying to catch up to it.
Early Signs of Local Resistance
At least two area townships have both enacted temporary moratoria on new data centers while they evaluate zoning, fire-safety standards, and infrastructure impacts. These are not anti-development moves as much as they are pauses driven by uncertainty. Local officials are asking questions that existing zoning codes were never designed to answer.
How loud is too loud for a facility that runs 24 hours a day?
How much water is too much for a single user?
How do you handle traffic and emergency response for a building with very few employees but enormous utility demands?
These are precisely the issues HB 646 tells the commission to study.
The Polaris, Westerville, and northern Franklin County angle is also important. Even when facilities are built in Delaware, Licking, or rural townships, the ripple effects land along the commercial corridors, housing markets, and utility networks that run through the north arc of Columbus. The pressure is regional, even when the address is rural.
A Quiet Tension Beneath the Growth
Central Ohio is now ranked among the more significant data center markets in the United States. Billions of dollars in semiconductor and data infrastructure investment are drawing national attention. But in places like Sunbury, Lewis Center, and the townships along the county line, the conversation is less about national rankings and more about what happens to a road, a well, a field, or a neighborhood.
That tension is what HB 646 is trying to capture. Lawmakers are recognizing that local governments are being asked to make decisions with long-term consequences using rules and information built for a very different kind of development. The commission’s mandate to look at land use, water, energy, economics, and even the quality of information circulating in communities suggests the state understands this is not just an economic development story. It is a planning story, an environmental story, and a community story.
And it is happening faster than anyone expected.
Six Months That Could Shape Decades
If HB 646 passes, the Data Center Study Commission will have just six months to listen, learn, and recommend how Ohio should approach an industry that is still evolving. For residents and officials in Delaware County and northern Franklin County, those hearings will not be abstract policy discussions. They will be conversations about projects already approved, already funded, and in some cases already under construction.
The state is now stepping into a discussion that began in township meeting rooms and county planning offices. The outcome will likely influence how future data centers are sited, regulated, and understood not just here, but across Ohio.
Because in this part of the state, the future of data infrastructure is not coming. It is already here.
Photo: Creative Commons License
