Meta's Ohio Data Center Keeps Growing: Wood County Approves 71 More Acres for Parking as Neighbors Push Back

2026 Rolling Updates

• Early 2026 — Meta's original Middleton Township data center site — roughly 280 acres, a planned 715,000-square-foot facility Meta describes as powered by "100% renewable energy" — is approved and under construction, bordered by Ohio 582, Ohio 25, and Mercer Road. The original rezoning was filed by Liames LLC.
• ~May 2026 — Liames LLC files a new rezoning request for 32 acres just north of the original site — 13 parcels along Ohio 25 and Mercer Road that were previously home sites, a motel, and apartments.
• June 2026 — The Wood County Planning Commission votes 6-2 to recommend approving the 32-acre rezoning. The Middleton Township Zoning Board then votes unanimously to reject it.
• July 7, 2026 — The Middleton Township Trustees override the zoning board's rejection and approve the 32-acre rezoning 2-1 (Trustee Melissa Petrea voting no; Trustees Mike Moulton and Fred Vetter voting yes). The same evening, the Wood County Planning Commission votes 6-2 to recommend a separate 39-acre parcel — filed by A. Schaller Limited Partnership, immediately north of the newly approved acreage — for the same industrial reclassification.
• Not yet resolved as of this writing: the 39-acre request still needs a Middleton Township Zoning Board recommendation and a final Township Trustees vote. No public filing confirms whether Meta will seek additional rezonings south of Ohio 582, though several residents raised that concern at the meeting.

Middleton Township Data Center: Rezoning Timeline

A Project That Keeps Expanding

When Meta's Middleton Township campus was first approved in early 2026, the deal on paper was fairly contained: about 280 acres at the intersection of Ohio 582, Ohio 25, and Mercer Road, with a planned 715,000-square-foot facility Meta pitched as powered by "100% renewable energy." Under construction throughout 2026, that footprint was the ceiling most neighbors thought they were living next to.

Six months later, that ceiling has moved twice. In June, Liames LLC — the same entity behind the original filing — put in a request to rezone another 32 acres immediately north of the site, along Ohio 25 and Mercer Road, spanning what had been residential home sites, a motel, and apartments. Then on July 7, A. Schaller Limited Partnership filed for 39 more acres just north of that request.

Meta's framing at each step has been the same: these parcels are construction logistics, not permanent facility expansion — temporary staging and parking that will eventually revert to landscaped buffer once the campus is built out. Residents at the July 7 meetings pushed back on that framing precisely because M-1 industrial zoning, once granted, doesn't automatically revert.

The Three-Step Process, and Where It Broke Down

Ohio township zoning changes typically move through three checkpoints. First, the request goes to the county planning commission for a recommendation. Then it goes to the township zoning board for its own, independent recommendation. Finally, the township trustees take the binding vote.

The 32-acre case ran that gauntlet — and split it. The Wood County Planning Commission recommended approval 6-2. The Middleton Township Zoning Board rejected it unanimously. That left the trustees choosing between two of their own bodies. On July 7, they sided with the county commission and against their own zoning board, approving the rezoning 2-1.

That override is what neighbors are pointing at. The zoning board is the checkpoint closest to the residents; the trustees' willingness to overrule it — and to do so on the same evening a second, adjacent 39-acre request was recommended for approval by the county — signals to opponents that the sequencing of these small parcel-by-parcel votes is running ahead of any comprehensive debate about the total project.

What Neighbors Are Saying

According to on-the-record reporting from BG Independent News' July 7, 2026 coverage of the meetings, resident Beth Cole said she distrusts Meta after the company allegedly violated a pledge to use only one site entrance and is running what she described as an unzoned concrete plant on the construction site.

Resident Tim Hainen warned that approving industrial zoning next to homes "sets a dangerous precedent." Trustee Fred Vetter, who voted yes, responded that "the precedent has already been set" — noting that existing M-1 zoning in the area already touches residential parcels.

All three statements were made in a public government meeting and reported by BG Independent News; they are attributed directly to that source (see Sources & Further Reading below).

Why the Land Keeps Getting Rezoned

Meta's attorney, Chris Ingram, argued at the hearing that the township is legally obligated to follow its land-use comprehensive plan, which calls for development in this area. Ingram told trustees that the newly zoned acreage will eventually become a landscaped tree buffer once construction wraps up, and that the M-1 industrial classification is what "firms up" Meta's commitment to keeping those buffer areas non-active.

The Middleton Township Zoning Board's earlier unanimous rejection hinged on a different reading of the same M-1 classification: it also permits uses like salvage yards and trucking operations. That gap — between what Meta says it will do with the land and what the zoning legally allows anyone to do with it later — is at the core of what residents are objecting to.

What Happens Next

The 39-acre request approved by the Wood County Planning Commission on July 7 still has to clear the Middleton Township Zoning Board and then the Township Trustees — likely in the coming weeks. Given how the 32-acre vote played out, opponents are watching whether the trustees will again override their own zoning board.

Multiple speakers at the July 7 meetings raised a bigger question: with the project's true footprint now well past its original ~280 acres, should the campus be treated as a single site with one comprehensive buffer zone drawn around it — rather than approved in a running series of parking-lot-sized rezonings? For landowners elsewhere in Ohio watching similar projects, that procedural question may matter more than the individual votes.

Sources & Further Reading

• BG Independent News — "With split vote, Middleton Township approves zoning change for acreage bordering data center" (July 7, 2026)
• Sentinel-Tribune — "Middleton Twp. OKs rezoning request; County planning commission recommends rezoning of additional 39 acres" (July 7, 2026)
• BG Independent News — "Rezoning request filed for 32 acres surrounding the Meta data center site"
• BG Independent News — "County planning commission recommends rezoning of 13 properties on edge of Meta data center"

Where this article cites approximate figures (the ~900-acre total project footprint, the 1,000+ on-site construction workforce), those are attributed to the on-the-record source who cited them at the July 7, 2026 public meetings. No public county filing aggregating the full campus footprint has been confirmed as of this writing.