Wilmington planning commission tables vote on Amazon data center project proposal

The Wilmington County Planning Commission has delayed plans to vote on the construction of an Amazon Web Services data center.

“Staff of the Commission has not made findings of compliance at this time due to outstanding studies and unresolved review comments,” executive director of Clinton County Regional Planning Commission, Anya Tipton, said.

Planning commissioners unanimously voted to wait on making a decision about the proposed project at a Jan. 6 meeting.

Mike Poindexter, a land development director for AWS, contracted project developer Bohler Engineering, told the Commission that some of the review comments were not related to the plan.

“A lot of the things you’re asking aren’t being included in the site plan submission,” said Poindexter. “Obviously, like generators, things like that. Those are going to be included with a building permit submission.”

The project would create about 100 permanent jobs and an annual payroll of around $8 million, according to a report from FOX 19.

The construction of the data center would also result in  AWS funding $25 million in public infrastructure in addition to investing $4 million into the project.

Some residents at the meeting expressed concerns about the effects a data center could have on Clinton County residents.

“I don’t think it’s right to all of these people who have lived here for all of these years, like myself, who have invested our life savings into this farm to build something like this right here,” said one attendee. “I don’t see the upside to this. I see this as more of an experiment.”

Other residents raised concerns about the effects of low-frequency noise and the potential for pollution from the diesel-powered generators that would be used to power the center.

The project was originally proposed in late 2025 after AWS purchased land in Jefferson Township earlier that year.

Plans to build other data centers in other Ohio cities have moved forward in the past year. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said that AWS was set to invest $23 billion in data centers in Ohio over the next six years in 2024.

In March 2025, Amazon announced that the company would build a $1 billion data center campus in Marysville.

A $3 billion data center campus in Sidney was also planned in 2025 after AWS secured a 30-year tax break from Shelby County. Construction for the campus will begin early this year.