Residents at an open house Tuesday night at the Canton Civic Center got their first look at plans for a massive data center on Canton's East Side.
The hyperscale facility is planned for a vacant industrial site, but neighbors are worried about its impact.
Vic Vicenty’s home is about 100 yards from the proposed data center property. He said he just found out about the project, but took a minute to research the sound levels associated with similar facilities.
“It’s like a humming, somewhere between 80 and 90 decibels," he said.
The open house host, California-based data center developer Panattoni, said noise levels will adhere to city of Canton limits, and that equipment is designed to run quietly.
Vicenty is also concerned about his home's resale value, adding, “Who wants to live next door to a data center?"
Nearby neighbor Brian Rager said he recently spent $30,000 on an upgrade to his property near the site.
“I put a fortune into that home," Rager said, "just to live beside a data center.”
Industrial past
This neighborhood is no stranger to heavy industry.
The 100-acre site of the proposed data center has sat vacant since the Ford Motor Company closed its forging plant there in the late 1980s.
Across from the data center site sits the sprawling former Republic Steel plant, which permanently closed in 2023.
Adam Kramer, who heads Panattoni's data center division, said the planned 324-megawatt, hyperscale facility represents the next phase in Canton's industrial history.
“I can’t think of a single commercial or industrial job that isn’t reliant on technology, and this is a key industry supporting all of those jobs,” he said.
Kramer added the facility will be operated by an as-yet unnamed major American technology company for cloud computing and machine learning.
He said data centers are the work horses of the digital economy.
“Every single thing we do on the internet goes through a data center,” said Kramer.
Panattoni is building four other data centers in Ohio, including one that will be run by Amazon in nearby Perry Township.
Construction on the Canton site, which is scheduled to begin next year, is expected to create 670 construction jobs and will take 30 months to complete.
