Aligned Mink Street (Etna) data center, Etna, Ohio

Pataskala City Council has blocked Aligned Data Centers' proposed 200-megawatt data center on Mink Street, an address in Etna Township that sits inside Pataskala's city limits in Licking County, Ohio. The company had said the three-building campus would bring more than 100 permanent jobs and more than $5 billion in investment.

At a meeting that stretched more than three hours on Tuesday night, August 25, 2026, the council voted unanimously to accept the Planning and Zoning Commission's earlier 5-2 recommendation against the project. Council president Brandon Galik said the power plan was incomplete: "There was big concerns with the power alone. The design was incomplete. We didn't have the full design for the power." Galik said state regulators, not just the city, control decisions like this, citing what he called Ohio's siting board.

Residents cited water use, land and the substations and transmission lines the site would need; one told a reporter, "My entire block will be destroyed." Holly Wenzinger said, "We don't have studies on the potential long-term effects of these facilities," and Brandyn Bernard objected to a four-story building "among the corn and wheat fields."

The fight is not over: after residents gathered more than 500 signatures, Pataskala placed a ballot measure banning any future data center that draws more than twenty-five megawatts of power on the November 3, 2026, ballot. Pataskala's measure is one of nine local petitions, alongside Conneaut, Defiance, Granville, Oregon, Piqua, Sunbury, Trenton and Upper Sandusky, that mirror a statewide push by Conserve Ohio, which is aiming for a 2027 statewide ballot after missing a signature deadline in July. Pataskala voters decide the ban on November 3, 2026.