Data center construction to require many more workers

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor

Original estimates had approximately 1,500 construction workers needed to build Van Wert’s $10 billion QTS data center but those figures have been revised. The number is now larger – a lot larger.

During Sunday’s “Commissioner’s Corner/Mayor’s Conference” program on radio stations 99.7FM WKSD and 1220AM/104.3FM, Van Wert Area Economic Development Director Brent Stevens said

Stevens said ground was recently broken on Phase I of the project, which will include four buildings at the Mega Site on Van Wert’s east side.

“Each building is roughly 650,000 square feet apiece and they’re all being built at once, so that has shifted their numbers up quite a bit,” Stevens said. “There’s going to be a couple of hundred people on this massive ground excavation over the next six months, then they’ll start to go vertical. For the first 12 months, we’re going to be in that 2,000 (construction worker) range, then all the subcontracters are coming in.”

That when the number of construction workers is expected to climb to as many as 5,500 per day.

“5,500 people in town per day, I would say after March of 2028,” he stated.

With several thousand workers coming to the area, the question is – where will they stay?

“I’ve been in the process of going to everybody that can facilitate new housing and going ‘we need to work on getting this done,” Stevens stated on the show. “We’ve been talking about housing for the last year and a half or two years, it’s just sinking in to everybody. I’m talking with several different developers – I’ve been talking to developers in Fort Wayne about building over there as well.”

“Of the 5,550 that are going to come here, how many are actually going to be moving to Van Wert because we need to prepare the schools too,” he added.

Stevens did say some of the workers will be local. As far as rest of the workers and where they will come from, Stevens quipped it’s like a “traveling road show”

“They’ll go to this data center and build it,” he said. “They have these certain groups that will fly in, do all the things they need to do but for example, for this particular project, the head Suffolk guy (Suffolk Construction Company, the contractor in charge), is actually moving to Van Wert and will be here for 6-7 years.”

The topic of an adequate number of local restuarants and bars was also discussed during the program and he mentioned the old Marsh hotel could and other storefronts downtown could be put to use, along with available space in the Towne Center Blvd area. Stevens mentioned that for every job that’s created at the data center, 3.5 ancillary jobs follow.

“Even our surrounding communities – Ohio City, Convoy – people are looking at doing things over there because of this particular project,” Stevens said.

Stevens noted that a temporary off-ramp will be built of off U.S. 30 directly into the construction site and a 6,000 spot parking lot.

As far as dollars to the local community, Stevens stated QTS is going to take “zero incentives.”

“None,” he said. “They’re going to give back to the community in an unbelievable fashion and I’m hoping we’ll be able to announce that (soon).”

Stevens said there have been ongoing discussions about how to manage the money coming into the community and how to do things in a fiscally responsible way.

“What we have decided in talking with the commissioners and the mayor, is there’s going to be funding coming in that will be city money and funding coming in that will be county money,” he explained. “We will create two boards – a board for the city and a board for the county.”

The full program can be heard below.