LORDSTOWN, Ohio — The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled unanimously on Tuesday, October 20, that the village of Lordstown does not have to complete a site-plan review for a proposed data center that was submitted days before the village imposed a moratorium on such projects. The decision ends, for now, a developer’s effort to force the Trumbull County village to keep processing plans for a large data center complex under the zoning rules that were in place when the plans were first delivered.
The case involved Bristolville 25 Developer and BHGH Properties. Bristolville announced in October 2025 that it intended to build a $3.6 billion data center complex on about 130 acres in Trumbull County, between State Route 45 and Reuther Drive, with part of the site in Jackson Township in Mahoning County. The site plan submitted to the village called for four three-story data centers.
Bristolville delivered its site plan shortly before Lordstown officials acted to stop new data centers. Village Council adopted a ban on data centers about two weeks after the submission, and the village later converted that ban into a moratorium, which runs through the end of this year. In November 2025, Bristolville asked the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, arguing that the village was required to finish the site-plan review under the zoning law in effect when the plans arrived.
The court rejected that argument. The village said an initial review found a number of problems with the submission, including missing stormwater management plans and utility information, no account of wetlands, and no preliminary planning and evaluation form. The justices found that Bristolville had not completed all of the steps required to apply for a zoning permit, so Lordstown was not obligated to consider the proposal. “Under the moratorium, the village is under no legal duty to proceed with a site-plan review of Bristolville’s project,” the court concluded.
The proposal drew strong opposition in Lordstown after it was announced. Residents raised concerns about potentially higher utility costs, arguing that data centers use large amounts of electricity and water to operate. Those concerns have been part of wider debates in Ohio communities as more data center projects have been proposed across the state.
The ruling is limited to this dispute. It does not approve the Lordstown project, and it does not create a statewide ban on data centers. Instead, the court drew a line between starting a preliminary site-plan review and completing the requirements needed to apply for a zoning permit, and it held that the unfinished submission did not require the village to keep the review moving once the moratorium took effect.
For Lordstown, the decision leaves the village’s moratorium in place through the end of 2026 and leaves the proposed complex stopped at the review stage. Any future data center proposal in the village would have to go through the local process in place at that time.
Photo: DogsRNice, CC BY-SA 4.0