Councilman Kazy Is Writing Cleveland’s Data Center Rules. You Have Until the End of January.

News / Data & Power — REAL POWER.TV

Councilman Brian Kazy chairs the committee writing Cleveland’s data center law. Kenn Dowell sat him down on The RealPower Radio Show to find out who pays the light bill, who drinks the water and where the city’s leverage sits.

In May, somebody tried to slip a $1.6 billion building into Slavic Village.

Lakeland Equity Group filed for a permit to put a hyperscale data center on 35 acres near East 55th Street. One building. 150 megawatts. The city rejected the application, and City Council shut the door with a moratorium on every new data center in Cleveland.

That door opens again at the end of January.

Whoever writes the rules before then decides who pays the light bill, who drinks the water and whose grandmother lives next to the noise. The man holding the pen is Councilman Brian Kazy. Ward 13. Chair of the Utilities Committee. Third-longest-serving member of council.

He sat down with me on The RealPower Radio Show. Underneath every question I asked was one more.

Can Cleveland get paid without giving away the water?

You're Using One Right Now

Let me tell you where I stand. I'm for data centers. I'm against one in my grandmother's backyard, and I'm against a light bill that goes up so a tech company can run its AI.

Kazy hears "no data centers" every day. Texts, emails, packed rooms. He answers them all the same way.

What's a data center?

Then the phone goes quiet.

Because the text you sent him went through one. So did your bank card this morning, and this show streaming on YouTube. Cleveland has had data centers for years. "When people say no data centers, they mean no hyperscale, AI, crypto," Kazy told me.

So council spent the summer defining the word. Edge centers behind your gas station and your bank. Enterprise centers inside places like Tower City. Colocation sites that draw as much as a hospital. And past roughly 50 megawatts, hyperscale.

Now hold that next to this. Cleveland Public Power uses about 300 megawatts to serve its share of the whole city. The Slavic Village application asked for 150.

One building. Half the lights.

So who pays for that?

The Bill Comes in September

Here's the part nobody explains.

Cleveland buys its power off the PJM grid, along with a dozen other states. CPP buys every June, enough to cover every customer running everything at once. A data center that shows up in September wanting 200 more megawatts can't get them at June's price.

Somebody eats that difference. If the rules don't say otherwise, that somebody is you.

Council saw it coming. Before the moratorium, Kazy said, it passed an ordinance that makes any data center pay up front for all of its own infrastructure and every upgrade. If they build it and leave, the wires stay and the bill never hits your kitchen table.

That's the light bill. The water is the bigger fight.

Cleveland owns the 10th-largest water system in the country. It owns its own electric company. It's sitting on empty industrial buildings all over the East Side. Kazy called it the perfect storm. A small data center uses 10,000 to 150,000 gallons of water. A hyperscale uses 1 million to 5 million. Picture 500 backyard swimming pools lined up down your street.

The city is working with the Sewer District and the EPA so whatever goes back into the lake goes back clean.

So Cleveland has exactly what these companies want. That should be leverage.

It isn't. Not yet.

The Tool That Doesn't Work

I pushed him. Council uses community benefits agreements on every big project in this city. Why not here?

Kazy laughed. He'd been waiting on that one.

To get a community benefits agreement, the city has to give the developer something. A data center doesn't need much from Cleveland beyond zoning, and it's entitled to that like anybody else. The city's favorite tool doesn't fit.

But these companies have money, and they know it. Every owner he has talked to, Kazy said, gives him the same answer. Ask for the world and you'll get the moon.

So council is building a new tool. The leverage isn't in what Cleveland gives. It's in what Cleveland owns. The water. The power company. The land.

And Cleveland is already having that same fight with another billionaire.

Same Question, Different Billionaire

Before he left, we got to the Browns, and Kazy didn't hold back on the Haslams. He pointed to the $10 million the family gave for an atrium at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while the team asks taxpayers to reimburse $1.1 million for stadium work. The night before he sat down with me, council voted that reimbursement down, 7 to 6.

"They made their fortune off the backs of hardworking blue-collar individuals who they ripped off and never went to jail for, but other people did," he said.

For the record: Pilot Flying J, the Haslam family's truck-stop company, paid a $92 million federal penalty over a diesel rebate scheme, and more than a dozen employees pleaded guilty. Jimmy Haslam was never charged and has always denied knowing about it.

Data centers. Stadiums. Same question. When the people with the most money want something from Cleveland, who ends up paying?

The Clock

Kazy took it on the road. Collinwood Rec. Council chambers. Gunning Rec on the far West Side. Every room packed and loud. The message came through. Cleveland does not want hyperscale here.

A draft bill is in the Law Department right now. Kazy wants every council member to see it before it's introduced, so it doesn't come out the other side with 35 amendments.

Here's my ask. Before that bill drops, the people of Slavic Village, Collinwood and every East Side neighborhood with an empty warehouse should get to read it. Kazy ran an open process. Finish it open.

We're for data centers. Regulated right. In the right place. Paid for by the people who profit from them.

The door opens at the end of January. Be standing in it.