A Look Back at 2025: Piqua Welcomes Data Centers with Open Arms
Vol. III, No, 209 - Residents had questions, the City Commission couldn't give real answers
As we look back at some of the most pivotal stories in local government this year throughout Miami County, the absolute breakneck speed in which the Piqua City Commission acted to welcome data centers, certainly rises to the top of the list.
Piqua’s data center story is not just about economic development; it is a case study in how local government can lose the room even as it claims to act in the public interest. In a year crowded with local controversies, nothing better captured the gap between residents and their leaders than the way this project was pushed through.
In a moment when communities across Ohio are slowing down data center proposals, Piqua’s City Commission did the exact opposite. While places like Wilmington debate long-term implications and communities such as Jerome Township in Union County and Washington Township in Franklin County resort to moratoriums or tougher zoning, Piqua’s leaders chose speed over scrutiny. They rammed through a package of data center legislation as emergency items, waiving the standard three-reading rule that exists precisely to give residents time to understand and respond. What should have been an extended civic conversation was compressed into a rapid-fire performance on a single night.
The most galling part was not just the speed, but the posture. For months, residents asked direct, reasonable questions about whether a data center was coming and what it would mean for their neighborhoods, utilities, and schools. Rather than level with them, city leaders hid behind non-disclosure agreements, insisting they could not acknowledge the project while quietly structuring complex deals with out-of-town lawyers and developers. That is not caution; that is gaslighting—insisting there is nothing to see while the groundwork for a transformative project is being laid just out of public view.
The stakes are enormous, and residents know it. The proposed data center complex will consume roughly 2 million gallons of water every day, placing heavy demands on the city’s water system and power grid, with consequences for other users and future growth. The facility itself is a massive, closed, technology campus—heavy on electricity and infrastructure, light on the kind of visible, street-level activity most residents associate with healthy development. Yet instead of using that reality to spark a robust public conversation, city leaders treated it like a detail to be managed behind the scenes.
The financing is equally intricate. The city structured the project around a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district that captures the new property value generated by the data center and redirects it into infrastructure improvements, rather than into the general tax rolls. To its credit, the agreement protects the school district through a formula that shares in that “incremental assessed value” and layers on PILOT payments of $100,000 per year per qualifying building for up to 15 years. On paper, it looks like a sophisticated package that funds roads and utilities while delivering predictable, long-term payments to schools. In practice, residents were asked to take it on faith, without a real chance to question the assumptions, risks, or tradeoffs before it became a done deal.
This episode did not happen in a vacuum. It follows a battery-burning controversy at the former water treatment plant, litigation over residents’ rights, a rebranding effort that cratered, and a jarring reversal on trash policy—all moments when the city signaled that public input was an obstacle, not an asset. When a commission with that track record chooses to push through permanent decisions in closed sessions and rushed votes, it confirms the worst suspicions about whose voices truly matter. The message residents receive is unmistakable: trust us, but do not expect to be included.
There may well be benefits—new investment, construction work, long-term revenue streams for schools, and upgraded roads and utilities funded by TIF. But even a structurally sound deal can be poisoned by a broken process, and Piqua’s process was broken from the start. When leaders treat confidentiality as a shield, emergency clauses as routine, and residents as an afterthought, they are not just approving a data center; they are underwriting deeper civic disengagement. If Piqua wants the upside of “big-time” projects, it has to act like a big-time community—one that insists on transparency, demands straight answers, and refuses to let its future be negotiated in the dark.
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