An application for a data center in Preble County, Ohio, has been withdrawn.

The property owners of two parcels of land totaling around 300 acres initially applied to rezone the land from agricultural to limited industrial use, which would facilitate the development of data centers. The parcels are located south of the I-70 highway.

But the intensity of opposition to a possible data center became apparent during an overcrowded public hearing in early September. Residents brought garden chairs to create seating space and queued up to express their opinions on the development.

In response, the owners withdrew their rezoning request on September 29, two days before the Preble County Board of Commissioners was set to vote on the proposal.

The owners issued a statement alongside the withdrawal, saying: “We wish to withdraw our rezoning application at this time. We have informed Doug Kramer [the owners’ representative] of our decision, and he will be present at the meeting to confirm.

“We believe this process requires a different approach and will be re-evaluated sometime in the future.”

The developer backing the project, PRSM, is a land development company formed in 2022 that specializes in digital infrastructure. PRSM’s website states that it delivers “utility-ready, entitled sites for low-impact data center development,” with other projects in Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Kentucky.

Located in western Ohio, Preble County is north of Cincinnati and borders the state of Indiana. Although Preble County is not a data center hotspot, Ohio has seen a great deal of interest from data center operators in recent years.

The state’s largest utility company, American Electric Power Ohio, forecasts that demand from the sector could grow from 600MW in 2024 to 5GW in 2030. This is despite the fact that the utility announced last month that its policies to reduce data center demand had already halved from 30GW to 13GW.

These policies, imposed in July, require data centers to pay a minimum of 85 percent of the energy they say they need, irrespective of actual usage. This pricing model will help the utility cover the cost of the infrastructure buildout.