Greater Cleveland Partnership Opposes Data Center Bans as Ohio's AI Debate Intensifies

No civic leader or organization can be data center agnostic in 2026. This week, Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region’s largest chamber of commerce, made its beliefs known.

“What we think is a poor approach is bans and moratoriums, because that sends up a big not open for business signal,” says GCP CEO Baiju Shah. “We think that it's better to have a conversation between policymakers and businesses and community members and other stakeholders to understand the same set of facts.”

In a newly published policy, GCP doesn’t lay out specific specs, incentive structures, environmental regulations or energy limits. Instead, it encourages what it calls “a smart growth approach,” centering around dialogue and information sharing. 

These are the principles laid out in the policy:

• Data centers are a crucial technology infrastructure that enable artificial intelligence, cloud services, and broader economic growth. Policy should treat them accordingly while setting clear, enforceable community protections. This is about more than just short-term construction investment and impact. 

• Fair cost bearing and grid readiness by data center operators: Operators should fund the full incremental costs they drive (interconnection, grid upgrades, reliability needs, and behind-the-meter generation) so residential and small-business ratepayers are protected. 

• Reliability and resiliency by design: Architectures and standards that reduce outage risk and improve system stability (e.g., redundancy, advanced switching, high-reliability uninterruptible power supply and power distribution, and robust maintenance practices). 

• Energy efficiency and flexibility: Solutions that improve energy efficiency and support grid stability — load flexibility, demand response (including via energy storage or renewables) and grid-interactive designs, not power usage efficiency only, especially as AI workloads create rapid load swings. 

• Water and thermal stewardship: Proven water-saving cooling strategies, closed-loop systems where feasible, heat reuse, and clear plans to minimize community impact from noise and waste heat. 

• Use of Ohio technologies, products, and services where possible: Incent the use of products and services from companies headquartered in or operating from to support growth of Ohio companies, operations, and high-quality jobs and to strengthen domestic supply chains. 

• Siting decisions that strengthen community goals: Data center location decisions should account for the opportunity cost of sites and existing structures. Adaptive reuse of vacant commercial structures should be considered where feasible as well. 

• Community benefits: These could include commitments to local hiring, skilled-trades training, and education partnerships, funding of infrastructure or other services, paired with transparent reporting on performance and community outcomes. 

The measured, business-leaning position isn’t surprising. Last week, GCP hosted its annual event, which serves as a celebration and realignment for Northeast Ohio’s power class, and artificial intelligence was top of mind. Despite reports that many employees are slow to embrace the technology, business and civic leaders are all in, describing it as a linchpin to the city’s successful future.

“I’m a huge believer that AI is the biggest game changer of our collective lifetimes,” said Christopher Gorman, KeyCorp CEO and incoming vice board chair, in his keynote speech. “Cleveland businesses, organizations and individuals must rapidly leverage AI tools to continue to compete, and most importantly, to win.”

But the conversation is shifting from “to AI or not to AI” to questions over the long-term impact of data centers — some as big as 40,000 acres — being plopped in a community. Already, since 2024, Ohio has given $550 million in tax incentives to data center builders. About 200 data centers are already up and running in Ohio, with another 100 planned or under construction. More than half are in the Greater Columbus area, and about two dozen are in Cuyahoga County. 

Shah calls the infrastructure, which serves “every business within our partnership in some way,” an “absolute necessity.” 

“Our concern is that this stuff starts to happen outside of our region,” says Shah, “and all of a sudden we've been left behind because we don't have the infrastructure we need to compete in this AI-driven economic transformation.”

And they’re not alone in that opinion. The Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council put out a statement also opposing data center bans.

“The members of the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council want Northeast Ohio to be a hub for our state’s cyber-physical infrastructure,” the group said in a written statement. “We advocate for sensible regulations rather than broad data center bans. Thoughtful approval allows local leaders to negotiate community benefits and safeguards that align data center projects with public priorities.”

Yet, opposition to AI data centers has emerged as one of the most bipartisan issues of 2026. Seven in 10 Americans are opposed to data centers being built in their communities, and 48% are strongly opposed. 

That opposition has turned to action. At least 18 Northeast Ohio municipalities are considering or have placed temporary moratoriums on new construction. Grassroots movements are also organizing against facilities over water usage, energy usage, utility cost hikes and noise pollution. 

Ravenna resident Will Hollingsworth went viral for their speech to the Ravenna City Council, which later voted to approve a moratorium on data centers. 

“It has proven that this might be one of the very first, in a long time — at least in the last 10 years — actually bipartisan issues where it's more important than party lines,” Hollingsworth told us recently. “This is more important than supporting a red or a blue candidate. This is about the environment. This is about our health.”

Last week, the city of Cleveland rejected a permit for a $1.6 billion, 35-acre data center in the Slavic Village neighborhood. 

“Mayor (Justin) Bibb has serious concerns about hyperscale, standalone data centers being placed in residential neighborhoods,” the city said in a statement. 

On a statewide level, Ohio Residents for Responsible Development is gathering signatures to put the data center issue on the November ballot. The proposed amendment would limit the size of new data centers that can be built in Ohio, banning anything larger than 25-megawatt data centers.

GCP’s policy doesn’t take any specific positions on incentives or wattage usage, decipher between good data centers and bad data centers, or anything like that. Shah doubled down on that point when asked about the Slavic Village development. 

“I don't know enough about the specific facility,” says Shah. “What I would say is that the conversation needs to be had between the proposed developer or data center operator and the city of Cleveland.”

More broadly, Shah says many citizens aren’t getting the full story about data centers. For example, he says, data centers come in many shapes and sizes, including enterprise data centers, colocation data centers, hyperscale data centers and more. So too are there many different types of cooling systems, such as closed-loop water systems, and emerging technologies that lessen the amount of cooling necessary for the plants. 

“What we're seeing in the rush to bans and moratoriums is a reactionary move in the face of concern, but not necessarily an informed approach,” says Shah. “We want everyone to have the information and make the choices that make sense for a community. What doesn't make sense is when you have a moratorium or a ban, and then all of a sudden you've lost the ability to have a conversation.”

That conversation is important, Shah says, not just because of the economic benefit that the centers could bring but also because the impact, environmental or otherwise, won’t be contained by city lines. 

“(A ban) seeds (communities’) ability to actually have a conversation on their terms,” says Shah. “Meanwhile, that infrastructure not only doesn't occur in that community, it may occur in other parts of this region, adjacent states, in ways that still impact the community that put the moratorium or ban in place. Because we still live on the same grid. You still, sort of, participate in the same water systems. So all of the externalities that communities are concerned about, or some of them, I should say, may still impact you if you choose to not participate in dialogues with developers and data centers, but now you don't get to do it on your terms.”

Artificial intelligence and data centers seem to have brought us to a spiritual crossroads. Shah is correct that we must have all the information before choosing a path. Much of the debate around data centers has taken place on the national level, and only now are we reckoning locally with the big questions that come with them: Who benefits? Who profits? Who pays? What are the long-term environmental impacts? How do we avoid low-income neighborhoods bearing the brunt of those impacts? Are they worth the long-term economic growth?

Will that growth even come?

One cannot expect GCP to answer those questions or to speak for anyone other than the 12,000 members it represents, which include representatives from small businesses such as Cleveland Clinic, major corporations such as Sherwin-Williams and even a data center operator in Park Place Technologies. And those businesses, as well as the businesses GCP is wooing to the region, Shah says, have a “desire to move closer to these critical pieces of infrastructure” — like data centers, cooling sources and energy resources — as they work through the AI transformation of our economy. 

But in its efforts to attract businesses and the talent to staff those businesses, GCP also traffics in the promotion of the region’s quality of life. The stuff that makes Cleveland awesome, like our parks, rivers, lakes, affordable living, thriving neighborhoods, quiet suburbs, and arts and culture. All the stuff communities fear could be threatened by an influx of data centers and the mass adoption of AI.

“The speed and scale of the technological transformation that we’re living through is unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. That change can feel anxious to many individuals,” says Shah. “Historically, we have not done well with these types of transitions in the short term. In the long run, things find a way to new equilibrium. But it’s the short runs that we have to worry about, because that's when people get displaced and despondent. We can't have that happen on the scale of magnitude and the speed with which it's happening without having massive repercussions, not only economic repercussions, but societal repercussions. We’ve got to advocate with policymakers for the support that’s required to make sure that we stay together through this transformation.”

As for now, that conversation between residents, civic leaders and business leaders does not seem headed toward alignment.