“When I first started in the trade, there still used to be an electrical demand,” he said. “There was a lot of manufacturing in this county that has left over the years, and now data centers are bringing that demand back.”
“I’ve got two or three pages of applicants I’d love to put to work on these projects.”
But Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, challenges the long-term economic benefit of data centers. He said AI data centers share characteristics with the fracking and natural gas industry, in being “spectacularly” capital-intensive, while being fairly non-labor intensive.
DAYTON DAILY NEWS INVESTIGATES
The cost of data centers
Massive data centers are proposed to be built across southwest Ohio. Our investigation looks at the cost and consequences of these power-hungry, water-thirsty, tax-supported facilities.
Reporting by London Bishop and Bryn Dippold.
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“This means for the communities that host them … because they hire very few workers, they’re not going to inject much, if any, income into the local community by means of payrolls.”
In Springfield, planned payrolls for the three proposed data centers vary. The $1.3 billion 5C Data Center, planned for the LexisNexis site at 601 Benjamin Drive, is estimated to bring 100 full-time jobs averaging a $127,000 salary and would be completed in late 2027 if financing and construction move forward, Springfield documents say.
Credit: Joseph Cooke
Credit: Joseph Cooke
Conversely, both Crusoe Energy and the Constant Company’s data center projects are each expected to create 20 full-time jobs and generate $1.5 million in annual payroll.
All three companies also have negotiated tax abatements. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 50% 10-year data center tax exemption for Constant Company, and Springfield city commissioners in 2024 approved a 15-year 100% Enterprise Zone property tax abatement for the 5C development from 2028-2042. Enterprise zones refer to land where businesses can receive tax exemptions on eligible new investment, according to the Ohio Department of Development.
Tax breaks
In the state more broadly, data center tax breaks have cost taxpayers an estimated $127 million in 2025 alone, according to Policy Matters Ohio, a left-leaning think tank.
“Those are the two primary means — labor and taxes — through which facilities like data centers can make at least some contributions to local economies, but in many cases, even those are being waived,” O’Leary said.
Eastern Ohio and Appalachia has been here before, he added.
A study published in January by Cleveland State University indicated Ohio’s shale-energy sector drew approximately $3.5 billion in fresh capital investment between July and December 2024, pushing cumulative investment since 2011 to $114.6 billion.
However, O’Leary argues, the whopping more than $110 billion in investment produced no measurable economic improvements for ordinary people living in the eight major gas-producing counties.
“I mean, process that number for a moment: $110 billion in a region that only has a combined population of 300,000 people. Now, you would think that if billion-dollar investments were going to be economically game-changing, this place should be Shangri-La. In fact, those eight counties have experienced the worst job loss and the worst population loss in the state of Ohio since the beginning of the natural gas boom,” he said.
‘Huge for us’
Angst said a proposed Trenton data center project could generate 800 to 1,200 construction jobs, with as many as 150 electrical jobs for each of the four planned data center buildings.
“(Data centers) have created such a spur of construction,” Angst said. “I’ve watched some of my neighboring local unions in Ohio expand their apprenticeship programs and expand job opportunities for their membership.”
Edgewood High School — which serves students in Trenton, Seven Mile and Wayne Twp. — is one of Local 648’s strongest feeders for its apprenticeship program, he said.
Some Local 648 members have already worked on data center construction across Ohio and in Michigan and Indiana.
“For them to have the opportunity to do one in their backyard, that’s huge for us,” Angst said.
