By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
While the massive Meta data center in Middleton Township is often identified as being in Bowling Green, it is not. The site is approximately 6.5 miles north of Bowling Green, about halfway to Perrysburg.
There is, however, a much smaller, less energy demanding data center being built within the city limits of Bowling Green.
The building, still under construction and projected to be completed in April, sits in the northeast corner of the city’s Woodbridge Business Park, located off Dunbridge Road on the east side of BG. The acreage in the business park is zoned Innovation & Employment, and did not need to be changed for the data center.
City officials are quick to point out the obvious disparities between the compact data center in the business park and the monstrous data center off Ohio 25 and Ohio 582.
The Bowling Green building is 61,554 square feet on a 12-acre parcel, compared to Meta buildings totaling 715,000 square feet on more than 280 acres.
“It’s very different to what’s being built in Middleton Township,” BG Mayor Mike Aspacher said. “These are not in the same stratosphere in terms of scale. There is no comparison.”
City officials are keenly aware that the development of land for data centers has a negative reputation close to that of factory farms.
“This is definitely a very different project than the one people are up in arms about,” Bowling Green Economic Development Executive Director Kati Thompson said of the project in the business park on the east side of the city.
The energy demands are grossly different, explained BG Utilities and Infrastructure Director Brian O’Connell. This site, which will not use water for cooling, will only use “negligible” amounts of water.
As for electricity, the small data center will average about 6 megawatts, or 8 megawatts during peak periods. That is less than the Magna plant also located in Woodbridge Business Park, and very similar to the Southwestern Container plant also in the city.
The data center should be a steady electric customer for the city, unlike other plants that operate on shifts rather than round the clock.
In contrast, the Meta site is expected to be a heavy water user, requiring up to 600,000 gallons a day. The site will be served by the Northwestern Water and Sewer District, using Bowling Green water. As for electricity, when Meta was searching for its site, the company said it would need up to 180 MW of electricity on peak demand days.
The Bowling Green data center is being developed by Oppidan, with the end user still unknown to the city. The painted stripe around the building bears a similarity to “Amazon blue,” but city officials said they have not been told there is a connection.
Constructing the building at 2501 Woodstream Drive, is local contractor Rudolph Libbe.
Once up and running, the data center is expected to employ 12 people.
Oppidan’s website described the Minnesota-based company as having expertise in development, construction management, commissioning, property management, and asset management.
A subsidiary called Oppidan Connect Data Centers has been developing data centers since 2016. These smaller data centers, sometimes referred to as “edge” data centers, are built near the people a business serves. According to the company’s website, this proximity allows for near-instantaneous connectivity, data processing and analysis, so that businesses can achieve greater speeds and reduce communication delays.
The data center, which is located in a Community Reinvestment Area, has been granted the standard tax break for industries in the city of a 100% abatement for 10 years. The city requires that any companies getting this abatement must make the school district “whole” during that period.
Oppidan has not mentioned any plans to expand from the originally proposed footprint of the data center. However, there is a parcel of a similar size just to the north of the plant currently under construction, where an expansion or a duplicate plant could possibly be built, O’Connell said.
