A Butler County truck driver who lives about a half-mile from one of the biggest proposed data centers in Ohio is now leading the fight to stop it — from a seat on his township’s zoning commission. John Glenn, 37, of St. Clair Township was appointed to the township Zoning Commission in October and spearheaded a zoning amendment that would prohibit data centers in every township district, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on November 8.
The target is Amazon Web Services’ planned $5 billion campus: 18 buildings on about 600 acres just south of Trenton, on land in St. Clair and Madison townships, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Glenn, who moved to the township in 2023 and has two young children, told the Enquirer he worried about noise, traffic and his kids playing outside — and then started thinking about his neighbors. “Once I got to thinking and digging into it, the selfish part kind of went out and I started thinking about everybody’s else’s families,” Glenn told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I would want somebody to fight for me and my family.”
Glenn stopped at the township administrative building to ask what he could do, applied for the open commission seat, and was appointed by the township trustees in October, the Enquirer reported. On October 13, the Zoning Commission voted unanimously for his amendment, which states that “data centers are prohibited as a principal land use in all Zoning Districts” and cannot be authorized as a permitted, conditional or planned use, according to the amendment text quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Trenton itself has already voted. On November 3, city voters passed Issue 17, a charter amendment banning large data centers inside city limits, by 3,541 to 903 — 79.68 percent — in unofficial results from the Butler County Board of Elections. But the ban stops at the city line: Trenton withdrew its petition to annex the campus land in September after pushback from both townships, the Enquirer reported, so the site sits in the townships, where St. Clair’s zoning decision is the one that can actually block the project.
The stakes cut both ways. The city of Trenton previously estimated the campus would create at least 120 full-time jobs and $15 million in revenue for the city and Edgewood City Schools, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Township trustee Wanda Jones supports the ban, writing in an email to the Cincinnati Enquirer that she is “standing behind a ban to protect our community residents and the wildlife in the area”; the township’s other two trustees did not respond to the Enquirer’s request for comment. Amazon did not directly answer the Enquirer’s questions about whether it would proceed outside Trenton, saying in a statement to the Cincinnati Enquirer: “We remain committed to setting a high bar for responsible data center development in Ohio, and will continue engaging communities early as we build out this important infrastructure.”
“We’re not against the township growing or businesses coming in,” Glenn told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “It’s just we want to make sure it’s a business that’s good for everybody in the community, not just a handful of people.” The fight has a recent statewide echo: Ohio voters sided against large data centers in a series of local ballot tests on November 3, a wave NewsForce247 covered in Chillicothe and across the state.
What happens next: the Butler County Planning Commission holds a hearing on the St. Clair Township amendment at 3 p.m. Tuesday, November 10, on the first floor of the Butler County Government Services Center, 315 High St., Hamilton, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. The commission only recommends; St. Clair Township’s three trustees will make the final decision at a future meeting that has not yet been scheduled.
Photo: Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0