HUBBARD — One resident asked officials to consider adjusting or lifting the city’s yearlong moratorium on data centers, as a councilwoman shared her thoughts after attending a data center tour with their township counterparts.

Earlier this week, Councilwoman Robin Zambrini, D-2nd Ward, said she, along with Councilman Jerry Crowe, D-at Large, and economic development and government officials, traveled to New Albany to see its business park and data centers.

New Albany is home to 40 completed data centers across 15 companies, with 28 more announced or under construction in its “IT and Mission Critical Cluster,” a high-availability infrastructure designed to host applications and services that cannot experience downtime without severely impacting business operations or safety, according to a presentation from New Albany officials.

The city welcomed its first data center investment in 2010, its first hyperscale investment in 2015, and Meta in 2017, with Google following two years later, according to the presentation’s timeline.

Zambrini said she went there with an “open mind,” but her goal was to see whether anything that worked for New Albany could work for the city, acknowledging that it was in no way like Hubbard in the sense that it was huge, progressive and modern.

“I’m just comparing the processes they went through to get to where they are today,” Zambrini said.

She said the development and implementation of a strategic plan was part of New Albany’s success, as it maps out its development.

“This plan is updated every five years, and its mission says it’s for the collaboration between the city, residents, (and) businesses — proactively planning for an outstanding community of choice,” Zambrini said.

Zambrini noted that “community of choice” was very important, as it establishes that New Albany’s residents chose what businesses the city wanted and where it was to go, as well as how it operates.

“It’s not the other way around — the businesses don’t come in and say, ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this,'” Zambrini said. “The community says, ‘Oh no, you’re going to do it our way,’ and it works.”

Zambrini admitted that she went into the tour a bit skeptical and curious if they were trying to gain something from city officials, but found New Albany’s officials to be “very open” and willing to share information.

Zambrini said, according to Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s director of community development, their strategic plan evolved over six months, and it was called “the people’s plan.”

“They have six industry clusters containing four data centers, and 28 more announced; they are various sizes, these buildings, they are warehouses, they are manufacturing plants, there are distribution centers,” Zambrini said. “They can be huge, but they can be small too; they all aren’t gigantic, which is called hyper-scale — they can be any size.”

Zambrini said New Albany’s formula is to generate as much revenue from the data center as if it were any other type of business.

REVENUE STREAM DEFINED

She said the formula has five requirements: service payments, a Tax Increment Financing collection, a new community authority payment, income tax and Payment In Lieu Of Taxes cash payments, which are liquid funds collected by the county’s treasurer in place of traditional property taxes.

“In their own words, they have implemented, quote, ‘A diversified revenue stream,’ Zambrini said. “Payments are made, regardless of the success of the company.”

Zambrini said in terms of local control and resources like water, she said they were told to dictate to companies how much they can have, not how much they need to operate.

In terms of sound, Zambrini said New Albany permits decibels no louder than the closest street-level noise, noting Google’s highest to be 68 decibels, and they work with sound experts.

Zambrini said they, as a group, didn’t have time to leave the tour bus, as they were in an industrial park, and ongoing construction was happening. She said there’s no actual heat coming from the buildings.

Zambrini said there might not be a large number of direct employees, but they have indirect revenue value, noting tech people come in to maintain and service the equipment, which needs to be refreshed every two to three years.

“This has not let up since the inception, and over 30 states have incentives for refreshing to take place,” Zambrini said. “Data centers hire contract personnel and security, they give back to the community for causes they support, there are fiber optics opportunities and construction puts people to work in the trade industries.”

Zambrini said data centers that become obsolete can be repurposed for manufacturing, warehousing or even deconstructed.

Chrysler did not recommend moratoriums because they are the equivalent of saying no to development and showing a community is closed for business, according to Zambrini.

“She said that she would recommend making data centers a conditional use in zoning regulations,” Zambrini said.

She said based on the information gathered, Hubbard’s potential development guidelines needed to be fine-tuned on the community’s terms.

Zambrini noted New Albany has a steering committee and Hubbard could do the same, and it would determine specific standards and formulas for data centers and other large-scale operations like manufacturing.

“We don’t want to say no to all business; we have empty buildings, we have had business come in, but we should have standards,” Zambrini said. “Very specific standards, and tell them, ‘This is what we want, if you come to town.’ We have the power to say that.”

PUBLIC COMMENT

Lawrence LaCivita, an East Liberty Street resident, noted Zambrini’s comments about the empty buildings in the city, and questioned how city officials felt about lifting the 12-month moratorium on the construction, placement or operation of a data center within the city that was implemented at a meeting earlier this month.

“She did say, once a city puts a moratorium on, it scares business away, so we’ve got a negative already, with that moratorium on us,” LaCivita said. “So I want to know what council wants to do about this, if you want to bring new business into the city? Because right now, you’re telling people, ‘We don’t want you here.'”

Zambrini said the moratorium gives officials time to fine-tune what they’re looking for, but agreed that they don’t want to scare businesses away.

“We need to be very, very strategic in how we allow business to come in,” Zambrini said.

LaCivita questioned whether the city really needed a year or if they were just going to scare people away, expressing the belief that businesses wouldn’t want to wait that long to come to a community.

LaCivita questioned whether they would agree to reduce the moratorium to six months, noting someone suggested that time period and it could always be changed, but Zambrini maintained city officials’ agreement on the current period.