As an AI consulting firm based here in Erie County, Ohio, I get a lot of questions about the AI battle unfolding in our own backyard. Since AVAIO Digital held its first community meeting on the proposed Project Andromeda data center in Oxford Township in mid-July, the same three questions keep coming up: What is this thing? What will it cost us? And who actually gets to decide?
This is the first post in a series I’ll publish every two weeks. The ground rules are simple: every factual claim links to its source, claims made by the developer are labeled as claims, and I don’t tell you whether to support or oppose the project. That’s your call. My only position is that the decision should be made on documented facts, and right now there’s a lot of undocumented noise.
Full disclosure: I work in AI, so some people will assume I’m cheering for this project. No one pays me to write this series, and I have no financial relationship with AVAIO Digital, its partners, or any party to the approval process — the full disclosure is in the FAQ below (“Who’s paying you to write this?”). Judge each claim below by its source, not by me. Every link is public. Check my work.
What’s Actually Being Proposed
According to reporting on the July town hall by Stay Tuned Sandusky, Project Andromeda is a proposed 250-megawatt data center campus on a 146-acre site in southwest Erie County. The plan calls for four buildings totaling 1.2 million square feet. Combined investment from AVAIO and an eventual tech tenant could exceed $5.5 billion, which the same report describes as potentially the largest financial investment in Erie County history.
A hyperscale data center is, at its core, a large building full of computers: thousands of servers running around the clock to power cloud services and AI. Building them requires land, electricity, water, and fiber connectivity, which is why sites like this one are being pursued across Ohio and the country.
The Three Questions Every Community Asks
Power. The proposal is 250 megawatts. AVAIO states the site sits directly on a major power grid and fiber corridor and will not require new utility routing (Stay Tuned Sandusky). That is the developer’s claim. Whether it holds, and who would pay for any grid work that does become necessary, are questions that can and should be answered in writing during the approval process.
Water. Cooling design determines water use. AVAIO partner Kevin Murphy has stated the campus will use a closed-loop cooling system with minimal water (Stay Tuned Sandusky). Closed-loop systems generally use far less water than evaporative systems. But “minimal” is not a number. A reasonable question for any resident, whether supportive or opposed: what is the projected water use in gallons per day, on the record?
Money. AVAIO says it will not seek local tax breaks or county grant funding, relying on private capital and state-level incentives (Stay Tuned Sandusky). The same report notes this contrasts with the Aligned Data Center project in neighboring Perkins Township, which drew criticism over a 70% local tax abatement. A public statement is not a signed agreement. The documents filed during the approval process are what count.
Who Decides
Not the county. Not the state. Not the developer. Oxford Township.
Per the same town hall coverage, Oxford Township currently has a local prohibition on data center construction. For the project to proceed, the township zoning board must issue a recommendation, and the three-member board of trustees holds the final vote on whether to lift that ban and approve the development. You can find meeting information through the Oxford Township website.
That means the most consequential meetings in this process are township meetings, and the most consequential documents are whatever conditions get attached to any approval, or the vote that declines to lift the ban.
Fact Check: The Water Bill Claim
A claim circulating locally says county water bills spiked because of data centers. Here is what the public record shows, from the Erie County Commissioners’ meeting minutes of November 19, 2025:
The approved 2026 county water rate increase is 3%. The City of Sandusky raised its wholesale rates to the county by 15% in mid-2024 and another 15% effective January 1, 2025, and the minutes state the Erie County Water Department absorbed those increases without raising customer rates. Nothing in those minutes attributes any rate change to a data center.
If someone shows you a different number, ask them for their source. That standard applies to me too.
Next Post
In two weeks: how data center power agreements typically work, and what terms other Ohio communities have negotiated. Same rules. Every claim linked.
This series is published by BlueShore.AI, an AI consultancy in Erie County. Questions, corrections, or sources I should look at? Send them. Corrections will be posted, not buried.