Project dossier · Amherst (Lorain County), Ohio

Nordson campus data center (Cervenka) Denied

Use variance to convert three newer buildings on the longtime Nordson Corporation campus into a data center complex - denied by the Board of Zoning Appeals on July 30, 2026, less than 24 hours after a hearing where 100+ residents packed City Hall and spilled onto the lawn. The developer's remaining path is an appeal in Lorain County Common Pleas Court.

Key facts

Filing LLC
Cervenka Development Partners LLC
Location
Amherst (Lorain County), Ohio
Decided
2026-07-30
Stage today
Denied

Source
read 2026-08-07

What to do next

Next step: Denied — watch for a re-filing or a scaled-down resubmission; ask the clerk to add you to the notification list.

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What has happened so far (4 events)

  • 2026-04-01operational
    Nordson campus buildings at 100-300 Nordson Drive listed for sale (the property had been on the market since April, per the developer's hearing testimony), after Nordson relocated manufacturing to South Carolina. · source
  • 2026-07-14filing
    Cervenka Development Partners LLC filed a use variance application with the Amherst Board of Zoning Appeals for 100, 200, and 300 Nordson Drive, proposing to convert approximately 240,000 sq ft of former Nordson industrial space into a 45 MW data center. · source
  • 2026-07-29hearing
    Over 100 Amherst residents packed City Hall for the BZA hearing on the data center variance; fire-code capacity limits restricted entry to 60 people while others listened from the lawn on their phones; attorney Gerald Phillips argued the application was defective because Cervenka lacks ownership or documented authorization from Nordson. · source
  • 2026-07-30vote
    Amherst Board of Zoning Appeals denied the use variance, releasing its decision less than 24 hours after a packed hearing (100+ residents, capacity limits pushed the crowd outside). · 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.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

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.

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 41.400, -82.220 — 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

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 3 headlines archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Ohio

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Nordson campus data center (Cervenka)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/nordson-campus-amherst-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).

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