The city of Wilmington will need to redo much of the zoning process for a $4 billion Amazon data center proposal before it can move forward. That's because of a federal court order in an ongoing lawsuit.
A group of Wilmington residents have been suing the city for failing to notify the public throughout key steps of the permitting process.
Amazon wants to construct a data center project that includes multiple buildings and an electricity substation on 471 acres of land in southwest Wilmington. Amazon estimates it would create at least 100 jobs and $8 million in payroll.
The court order filed on July 14 states the city cannot decide on the Amazon data center site plan until it redoes ordinances the council passed on generator noise, rezoning the parcel and data centers as a permitted land use.
Ohio regulations require public hearings and 30 days notice of these hearings in a local publication for most zoning measures. Municipalities are also required to mail written notices to property owners abutting the land in question at least 20 days in advance of the scheduled hearing date.
The federal lawsuit filed in May alleges the city failed to follow these procedures for the three zoning amendments related to Amazon’s project.
Wilmington resident Jessica Sharp is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. While this order doesn’t guarantee a win in the case, Sharp said it’s a favorable order that’s a big deal.
“What it really means is the judge was convinced that there was serious defect in the public notice required under Ohio law, and that he had concerns about the way that our due process rights had played out thus far,” Sharp said.
The city of Wilmington declined to comment, since the case is still pending in federal court. Amazon Data Services, which is also a defendant in the case, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The city council announced a public hearing for the three affected ordinances at its July 16 meeting. The hearing is scheduled for Aug. 20.
Resident concerns over proposal
To Sharp, this proposal hits close to home — she said she lives around 200 feet from the property that would be used for the data center. She said she moved into her home at Timber Glen a few months before the data center proposal was publicly announced.
After finding out about the project from a neighbor in mid-November, Sharp said she worked to mobilize the community and network with experts “to bring credible information to city council about this proposal and to make the right decision if it wasn't too late.”
“We later learned that the zoning and the land purchase had already been in the works for quite a long time,” Sharp said. “So it seemed in a lot of ways like this was a done deal from the day that the public found out.”
The court order also states the Wilmington Planning Commission cannot prevent individuals at meetings from giving public comments and providing expert testimony on site plan applications the commission will decide upon.
This comes after members of the public, including Sharp, were prohibited from speaking at a special planning commission meeting in March that discussed materials in Amazon’s site plan application.
Besides transparency, other resident concerns Sharp described about the project include exposure to intensive industrial construction for adjacent neighbors, noise pollution and increases in local water and electricity demands.
What's next
As of July 16, Sharp said the families embroiled in the lawsuit have already spent $54,000 in legal fees for the case.
The case will continue in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
The local group Wilmington Residents for Responsible Development will hold an unofficial town hall this Sunday at Aging Up Community Center to discuss responses to the court order and upcoming ballot initiative campaigns.
