A Tale of Two Agreements
Vol. III, No. 343 - Both Piqua and Sidney are Getting New Data Centers. What are these communities getting?
Sidney and Piqua have both approved development agreements tied to large data center projects, but for most residents the key question is simpler than the legal language: what exactly is the city promising, and what is the community getting in return? These agreements show how local governments use tax breaks, infrastructure commitments, and long-term legal assurances to compete for major private investment.
What is a development agreement?
A development agreement is a contract between a city and a developer that spells out the rules for a major project before construction begins. It usually covers land use, infrastructure, timing, and incentives, and it gives the developer more certainty while giving the city a roadmap for what it is expected to deliver.
That matters because data centers are unusually infrastructure-heavy projects. They need large sites, strong electric service, water and sewer capacity, road access for construction and operations, and a predictable regulatory environment before a company is willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars or more.
What Piqua agreed to
Piqua’s agreement is with J5 LLC d/b/a Shaytura LLC for a multi-phase data center project on roughly 607 acres near Washington and Farrington Roads. The agreement says the city added the property to a pre-1994 Community Reinvestment Area, giving each qualifying building a 100 percent, 15-year property-tax abatement, and also approved a 30-year, 100 percent tax increment financing exemption on the land.
Because normal property taxes are largely taken off the table, the company instead agrees to make annual payments in lieu of taxes, often called PILOTs. Those payments begin at $735,000 per qualifying data center building, with a minimum of $1.47 million in years six through twenty if enough buildings are operating, plus inflation adjustments and extra payments for very large buildings.
Piqua also agreed to support the site with road work, utility coordination, and expedited approvals. The road improvements are tied to a traffic impact study and are funded through an escrow arrangement in which the developer reimburses the city for agreed costs, while keeping strong oversight over change orders and scope changes.
Just as important, Piqua promises long-term stability to the developer. The agreement says new city taxes, fees, or regulations targeted only at the project cannot move forward without the company’s consent, and new zoning or land-use rules adopted later generally will not apply unless the company chooses to accept them.
What Sidney agreed to
Sidney’s agreement is with Amazon Data Services for a data center campus on about 243.1 acres at 2388 West Millcreek Road. City Council authorized the agreement through Resolution 27-26 on April 27, 2026.
The Sidney materials identify the project site, city improvements, a schedule for those improvements, developer improvements, and monthly reporting requirements. In plain terms, Sidney is also promising to coordinate public infrastructure and city actions so the project can move forward on the company’s timeline.
The portion of the document provided here is less revealing about the tax structure than Piqua’s agreement, but it clearly shows the same general model. The city is using a formal development agreement to reduce uncertainty for the developer and to lock in the public side of the bargain before a major campus is built.
Why cities do this
Cities pursue these deals because a successful data center can bring a major capital investment, utility upgrades, construction activity, and some ongoing local revenue. Even though data centers often do not create as many permanent jobs as a factory of similar size, they can still be attractive because they add high-value facilities to industrial land and may strengthen the case for other infrastructure investment nearby.
For local officials, the pitch is usually straightforward: if a city does not offer certainty and incentives, the project may simply go somewhere else. That competitive pressure helps explain why agreements like these often contain generous tax treatment and long lists of city commitments.
What residents should pay attention to
The first question is what the city is giving up. In Piqua, that includes future property-tax growth that would normally flow through the tax system, as well as some freedom to change project-specific taxes or regulations later. In Sidney, the public commitment appears more focused on infrastructure delivery and city coordination, which still carries financial and operational consequences for the community.
The second question is what protections the public gets if the project is delayed, reduced, or never fully built. Piqua’s agreement gives the company broad flexibility on timing and even allows termination before the first formal notice to proceed, with reimbursement to the city capped at $2 million in third-party costs. That means the developer retains substantial control over whether and when the promised investment actually materializes.
The third question is whether the long-term community benefits are clear enough to justify the concessions. Roads, utilities, and local payments can be real benefits, but residents should also ask how much of the upside is guaranteed, how much depends on future buildout, and whether schools and other public services are missing revenue they otherwise would have received.
What this means locally
These agreements are not unusual in today’s economic development environment, but they are important because they shape local tax policy, infrastructure priorities, and land use for decades. They are less about one building permit and more about how much certainty a city is willing to provide in exchange for a chance at a transformative project.
For residents, the best way to read these deals is not as simple wins or losses. They are negotiated trades: the city offers tax relief, public improvements, and legal stability; the developer offers investment, some local payments, and the possibility of future growth. Whether that trade is worth it depends on what gets built, how quickly it happens, and whether the promised public benefits are strong enough to outweigh what the community gave up at the start.
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If you want the signed developer agreement let me know