The Constant Company LLC plans to open a Springfield location with 20 jobs generating around $1.5 million in new annual payroll.
The company is a cloud infrastructure provider with 32 data centers worldwide. Constant’s flagship product, Vultr, offers global bare metal (physical servers), dedicated cloud and storage solutions, according to the company’s website.
The project would include constructing a new data center to “expand operations and meet demand,” according to the governor’s office.
A data center is the physical facility that stores digital data and contains computing machines and related equipment, including the computing infrastructure that information systems require such as servers, data storage drives and network equipment, according to the website of Amazon Web Services.
The Greater Springfield Partnership declined to comment on the data center until the company makes a public statement.
The Constant Company did not return a request for comment.
The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 50% 10-year data center tax exemption for the project.
Another $1.3 billion data center planned to be completed in 2027 would being around 100 full-time jobs, the News-Sun reported last year. The 5C Data Center is planned for the current LexisNexis site at 601 Benjamin Drive in the Prime Ohio development at the southeastern edge of the city, plus expansion around that building.
City commissioners approved a 15-year 100% Enterprise Zone property tax abatement from 2028-2042. Enterprise zones are specific plots of land where businesses can receive tax exemptions on eligible new investment, according to the Ohio Department of Development.
Some Springfield residents have expressed concerns about the impact of data centers on city water and electric infrastructure. Melissa Rexroth, of Springfield, asked commissioners at the recent meeting whether electricity prices “will skyrocket due to demand” and if water could become scarce.
City Manager Bryan Heck said at the meeting that the utilities department evaluates the impact of all proposed projects on water, sewer and stormwater to decide whether to support them.
Service Director Chris Moore said at the meeting the 5CDC project is estimated to use around 300,000 gallons of water daily, about 3% of what the city pumps on any given day.
This puts 5CDC in the top five of the city’s top customers, Moore said.
“Our water treatment plant has the capacity to pump more than double what it is at this point, so as it stands now, this project could use a fraction of what we pump in a given day,” Moore said. “If they did increase, we have a lot of room to grow. A user of this size is actually a great thing for a water utility because it is one large customer, and it requires much less attention than several small customers.”
For that specific data center, the utilities department will use water to cool equipment and most of that will evaporate, Moore said. What doesn’t evaporate will go into the company’s retention pond, meaning it will not return to the sewer system.
The state is considering legislation to limit new data centers for a period of time while lawmakers evaluate how data centers can be charged for electricity rather than all electric customers being responsible for the increased costs.
Data centers are large consumers of electricity and water (for cooling purposes), which have led to concerns about increasing rates for local residents.
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