Massillon City Council Extends Stay On Data Center Development

From Your Newspaper - Massillon City Council has extended its temporary stay on data center development while members continue researching the facilities and developing permanent zoning regulations.

In the June first meeting, Councilman Marcum was quoted saying

"I want to note that many recent headlines in the city and county have been inaccurate at best and misleading clickbait at worst. Some have suggested that council is passing legislation to permit data centers in Massillon, but that is not what is happening. Council is attempting to address a regulatory gap that the Bitdeer project has exposed. Bitdeer is operating at its current location, rightly or wrongly, because the city does not have regulations clearly stating where data centers or similar operations may or may not be located. Legal counsel has advised that the city cannot simply ban data centers and that, under current state and federal law, zoning regulations must allow them to exist in some form. The proposed rules would potentially allow data centers in I-1 light industrial districts and I-2 heavy industrial districts, although council is still considering whether they should be limited exclusively to I-2 districts.

The proposal also includes broad provisions governing electricity, water, sewer use and noise. Council could add language requiring developers that connect to the electric grid to pay for and certify responsibility for any necessary upgrades. The water provisions could also be revised to encourage closed-loop cooling systems, which appear to be becoming an industry standard. The proposal further directs the Site Plan Committee to consider noise and allows it to reject a plan that does not adequately address sound concerns, with the possibility of adding stronger penalties later. Most importantly, everyone should understand that this legislation is only the first step in a much longer regulatory process."

The original stay was approved in April through Resolution 23-2026. During council’s discussion, Councilman Michael Gregg said the city did not necessarily intend to stop data center development. Instead, he said council wanted greater control over the process and time to consider how the relatively new type of development should be handled in Massillon. The resolution received nine affirmative votes.

Council later began considering Ordinance 60-2026, a proposed amendment to Massillon’s planning and zoning code. The ordinance would establish definitions for data centers and change the rules governing where they could be located in light and general industrial districts. It would also add data centers to the city’s site plan review process.

On June 15, council unanimously approved Resolution 25-2026, extending the stay for another 60 days. During discussion of the proposed zoning ordinance that evening, Councilman Seth Marcum connected the extension to continued work on possible amendments, saying council could use future work sessions to discuss the proposal and attempt to complete a final version before the stay expired.

From what we can see at face value from these discussions it appears, at the least, the city council is doing their due diligence to control and mitigate negative impacts from potential data centers.

We reached out to city council for comment and are still waiting to hear back. We will update this if anything changes.