Youngstown (Mahoning Valley) Data Center Market

Overview

The Youngstown (Mahoning Valley) market covers Mahoning and Trumbull counties in northeast Ohio, around Youngstown and Warren. Closed steel mills and auto plants left large industrial sites with grid service. In 2025 data center developers began buying sites in the valley. Local governments answered with moratoria.

History

Steel defined the valley for most of the 20th century. On September 19, 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the closure of its Campbell Works, cutting about 5,000 jobs. More mill closures followed. General Motors built cars at its Lordstown Assembly plant from 1966 until March 2019. The plant passed to Lordstown Motors in 2019 and to Foxconn in 2022. GM and LG Energy Solution opened the Ultium Cells battery plant nearby that year.

Data Recovery Services, a local firm, ran two Youngstown data centers and about 5,500 miles of regional fiber. Involta bought those assets in 2015 and renamed itself Ark Data Centers in 2024. In 2025 a SoftBank affiliate bought the Lordstown plant and its equipment from Foxconn for $375 million. That September, OpenAI named Lordstown as a Stargate site.

The Market Today

Ark runs a colocation facility on Belmont Avenue in Youngstown. SoftBank and Foxconn are converting the former GM plant into a factory for modular data center equipment. The plan includes a small data center on site.

Bitdeer plans a data center campus on the site of the former Niles coal plant, which closed in 2012. The site straddles Niles and Weathersfield Township, and Bitdeer targets energization in late 2028.

Advantages

• Gas-fired power. Two combined-cycle gas plants in Lordstown together have nearly 1.9 GW of capacity. The Trumbull Energy Center joined the Lordstown Energy Center in January 2026.
• Industrial land. Former auto, steel and power plant sites offer large parcels with existing utility service. The former GM complex alone covers nearly 600 acres.
• Location. Youngstown sits about 65 miles from both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Interstates 76 and 80 cross the valley.

Challenges

• Local moratoria. Lordstown banned data centers in November 2025 and replaced the ban with a moratorium in January 2026. Warren, Niles, Cortland and several townships, including Howland and Weathersfield, paused new data center permits in 2026.
• Legal risk. In October 2026 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Lordstown need not keep reviewing a $3.6 billion campus plan filed before its moratorium.
• Community concerns. Residents cite water use, noise and power demand.
• Capacity prices. The PJM Interconnection (PJM) capacity auction cleared at its price cap for the third straight time in July 2026. Data centers drive most of PJM's forecast load growth.

Trends

• Building equipment. The valley's Stargate project now centers on making modular data center equipment.
• Statewide pushback. A proposed Ohio constitutional amendment would bar data centers above 25 MW. It missed the November 2026 ballot, and its backers now target 2027.
• Incentives under review. Governor Mike DeWine paused new state sales tax exemptions for data centers in May 2026, pending a legislative study.

Power and Policy

PJM runs the regional grid. FirstEnergy's Ohio Edison delivers power across most of the valley, and Niles runs its own municipal electric system. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) sets FirstEnergy's rates. House Bill 15, signed in May 2025, ended ratepayer subsidies for two coal plants and eased behind-the-meter generation. In May 2026 PUCO told FirstEnergy's Ohio utilities to propose added transmission charges for large data centers.