Four Residents Sue Over Faircrest Data Center

So there's a lawsuit now.

I didn't expect to write that sentence this soon, but here we are.

A few weeks ago, the Faircrest Data Center project in Perry Township was still moving through the permitting process—hearings, objections, the usual bureaucratic machinery.

Then on September 1st, four residents filed suit in Stark County Common Pleas Court.

Named defendants: Perry Township's Board of Trustees, Panattoni Development Company, the City of Canton, the Stark County Board of Commissioners, and the Perry Local School District Board of Education.

The residents suing are Megan Kenney, Todd Kenney, and Keith Brown.

I found this through reporting from Zaria Johnson at Ideastream Public Media and Abreanna Blose at the Canton Repository—both published the story on September 3rd—and I've independently verified it against the court filing itself.

When the Process Moves to Court

Here's the thing about a lawsuit in county Common Pleas Court.

It changes the nature of what's happening.

Up until now, the Faircrest project has been moving through the standard channels: zoning hearings, township meetings, conditional-use permits, appeals to the board of zoning appeals.

Those are administrative processes.

They have rules, but they're designed to move relatively quickly.

A lawsuit is different.

A lawsuit means the residents believe they have a legal claim—that something in how the project was approved or how it was described or how it affects their property or rights violates Ohio law.

I don't know what specific claim they're bringing.

That's in the full complaint, which I haven't seen yet.

But I know that once a lawsuit is filed, the project doesn't just move forward while people sort it out in court.

Everything usually pauses.

There are injunctions, motions to dismiss, discovery periods, possible appeals.

The timeline changes.

The number of people involved changes.

The cost definitely changes.

The Larger Thing Happening Here

This is the point where I have to be honest about what I don't know.

I don't practice law.

I don't know Ohio administrative law or property law or the specific grounds on which residents can challenge a conditional-use permit or a township development.

I've read a lot of public records over the last few years, but reading records and understanding the legal mechanics of challenging them are not the same thing.

What I do know is this:

Every major development project eventually faces a choice point.

Does the opposition stay in the public-hearing phase?

Does it escalate to litigation?

And if it escalates, what does that tell us about how the community views what's being proposed?

I'm asking honestly, not rhetorically.

I don't know whether litigation means the project is in serious trouble, or whether it's just the normal expected friction on a large development, or whether it signals something else entirely.

All I know is that four people believed the situation warranted hiring an attorney and filing paperwork in county court.

That's a real action with real consequences.

Where My Own Uncertainty Sits

Here's what I'm wrestling with.

I built Stark Civic Monitor partly because I wanted to make it easier to find information about what's happening with data center development in the county.

I'm genuinely trying not to take a side on whether the Faircrest project should move forward or be stopped.

But the more I track these records, the more I see things like lawsuits and objections and conditional permits with restrictions, the more I realize something:

I might not have a choice about neutrality the way I thought I did.

When I pull a lawsuit filing and post it, am I just reporting what happened?

Or am I highlighting one piece of this project—the opposition—in a way that shapes how people see it?

That's not a rhetorical question.

I genuinely don't know.

All I know is that I promised to make the public record easier to navigate, not easier to ignore.

And the lawsuit is part of the public record.

Why This Matters for Stark Civic Monitor

The Faircrest project dossier on the site now includes this lawsuit as a tracked finding—verified, dated, sourced, sitting alongside the permits, the hearing dates, the earlier objections, and everything else filed so far.

That's the whole point of the dossier approach.

When you're trying to understand what's actually happening with a large project in Stark County, you shouldn't have to hunt through the courthouse, then the township records, then news articles from three different outlets, then social media rumors about what someone said at a meeting.

You should be able to see it all side by side.

The lawsuit is one piece of that picture.

So are the permits.

So is the conditional-use approval.

So are the objections from residents.

So are the statements from the developers.

Right now, everything's still moving.

And having all of it in one place means you can actually see the shape of what's happening instead of just the part that landed in front of you today.