Aligned Data Centers - Pataskala industrial park Awaiting decision
200 MW campus in three buildings on ~89 acres at Broad St SW & Mink St SW. Planning & Zoning recommended rejection 5-2 after protests filled City Hall; City Council decides Aug 25, 2026 (5:30 p.m.). Council has separately advanced a ballot measure that could ban large data centers.
Key facts
- Operator
- Aligned Data Centers
- Size
- 200 MW
- Acres
- 89
- Location
- Pataskala (Licking County), Ohio
- Hearing
- 2026-08-25
- Stage today
- Awaiting decision
Source
read 2026-08-07
What to do next
Next step: Heard 2026-08-25; decision pending. Call the board clerk for the vote date and get on the notification list.
What has happened so far (11 events)
- 2023-01-01financing
Aligned Data Centers purchased three parcels totaling about 89.4 acres at 6770 Mink St. in Pataskala for $13.9 million (year reported as 2023). · source - 2025-11-01filing
Aligned filed its site plan application with the City of Pataskala to begin the review process for the three-building data center campus (reported as November 2025). · source - 2026-03-04hearing
Pataskala Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on the Aligned Data Centers proposal, one of several commission hearings prior to the June 3 recommendation vote. · source - 2026-04-01hearing
Residents packed a standing-room-only Planning and Zoning Commission meeting in Pataskala, voicing skepticism about the proposed data center and calling for a pause before any approval; resident Grace Franklin said she would support a statewide ballot amendment and help collect signatures. · source - 2026-05-04public-comment
Pataskala City Council's development committee reported that Planning and Zoning had offered feedback to inform criteria the council may use for future data center developer plans. · source - 2026-06-03vote
Pataskala Planning & Zoning Commission voted 5-2 to recommend that City Council reject Aligned's site plan, hours after residents rallied on the City Hall lawn. · source - 2026-06-04coverage
Ohio Free Press reported that residents at the June 3 zoning meeting raised concerns the campus would use Bloom Energy fuel cells requiring roughly 15,000 decatherms of natural gas and cited noise from a comparable Aligned facility in Sandusky, Ohio. · source - 2026-06-26protest
Pataskala organizers reported a petition drive underway to put a charter amendment banning data centers with peak load over 25 megawatts on the ballot, needing at least 310 valid signatures (goal 500) and planning to submit them the week of July 6. · source - 2026-06-30coverage
The Columbus Dispatch reported that Pataskala planning and zoning staff had recommended approval of Aligned's 200-megawatt plan, but the planning and zoning commission voted 5-2 to recommend rejection, sending the decision to City Council's Aug. 25 hearing. · source - 2026-08-03vote
Pataskala City Council passed an ordinance placing a charter amendment that could ban large data centers on the November ballot, expediting the vote to meet the Aug. 5 filing deadline for the Nov. 3 ballot. · source - 2026-08-25meeting
Pataskala City Council public hearing on the site plan, 5:30 p.m., council chambers - the decisive vote. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Ohio EPA — Division of Air Pollution ControlThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Ohio EPA eBusiness Center (Air Services)Searchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Pataskala (Licking County) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Pataskala (Licking County) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Public Utilities Commission of Ohio — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 39.990, -82.670 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Recent news
4 stories tracked since 2026-08-23 across 4 outlets. 2× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. 2× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. Most recent: “Pataskala rejects company's data center proposal in industrial park” (The Newark Advocate, 2026-08-26).
- Pataskala rejects company's data center proposal in industrial park
- Pataskala rejects company's data center proposal in industrial park
- Pataskala rejects proposed data center; voters to decide potential ban in November
- Pataskala City Council hearing Tuesday on data center proposal comes after residents petitioned for a vote to ban such centers
Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 4 headlines archived.
Around here
- Ohio briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Ohio
- Google New Albany — New Albany, 9 mi
- Meta Prometheus — New Albany, 9 mi
- Google Columbus — Columbus, 18 mi
- Google Lancaster — Lancaster, 20 mi
- Urbana Technology Hub — Urbana (Champaign County), 58 mi In review
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Aligned Data Centers - Pataskala industrial park”, aigridwatch.com/projects/aligned-pataskala-oh, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).