Sunbury residents pack a planning meeting to fight data centers, plus a south Columbus brunch spot closes after 17 years.

Good morning, Columbus. It's 23° right now but climbing to 36° under mostly cloudy skies.

You'll want a real coat this morning. Light snow's possible but not guaranteed. Layer accordingly.

📍 Sunbury residents pack meeting to fight data center development

Infrastructure strain without infrastructure answers.

Sunbury residents packed a planning and zoning meeting this week to kill a data center rezoning proposal. The city postponed the public hearing after discovering an error with parcel numbers, but residents showed up anyway to make their opposition clear.

The proposal would turn 330+ acres into data center land. Residents showed up armed with research: miscarriage rates near data centers, cancer clusters, water quality red flags, grid strain.

They're not wrong about the infrastructure strain. A typical large data center draws as much power as 50,000 homes.

The cooling alone can suck down millions of gallons a day. Central Ohio attracts data centers because of cheap electricity from coal plants and solid fiber infrastructure, but residents end up footing the bill through higher utility costs and stressed water systems.

Sunbury would become a different town. Farms and houses replaced by server warehouses. Zoning changes are permanent.

This isn't abstract policy. It's deciding what kind of place Sunbury becomes for the next generation.

The jobs show up, but they're fewer and more specialized than promised, while the tax breaks last decades.

Watch for when they reschedule that hearing, and whether Sunbury demands environmental impact studies before voting. This one sets precedent for every other Central Ohio suburb eyeing data center money.

Listen to a recent NY Times Podcast that discusses data centers coming to small towns.

📍 Skillet closes after 17 years in German Village

The rare closure that isn't a cautionary tale.

Skillet's closing after 17 years, and for once it's not the depressing story. The owners got an offer they couldn't refuse, and they're not saying what.

Skillet, the farm-to-table brunch spot on South Fourth Street, announced the closure via social media, calling it "bittersweet" and mentioning "an opportunity" without details. Whether it's someone buying the business, the building, or the owners moving to a new project remains unclear.

For 17 years, Skillet was the kind of place German Village residents could count on for weekend brunch without driving downtown. Seasonal menus, local ingredients, the kind of place where regulars knew the staff by name.

The closure reminds us that even successful restaurants have shelf lives. Seventeen years is a remarkable run in an industry where most fold within five. The owners built something that mattered to their neighborhood, and they're choosing to end it on their own terms rather than letting it fade or fail.

German Village loses a reliable breakfast destination, but this closure comes without the usual red flags: no sudden social media silence, no mounting debt stories, no quiet disappearance. Just owners who found their exit and took it.

⚡ Quick Hits

Ohio's statute of limitations debate continues as survivors push for legal reforms. Major cases centered in Columbus (OSU's Strauss scandal, allegations at other institutions) show how current laws protect institutions over victims.

📜 On This Day

In 1956, philosopher Judith Butler was born in Cleveland. Butler uses they/them pronouns, and their book Gender Trouble basically invented queer theory. Ideas that started in Cleveland classrooms rewrote how we talk about gender across entire academic disciplines.

They're now a professor at UC Berkeley, but Ohio can still claim them as homegrown intellectual firepower.

Layer smart out there, Columbus. That 23° sunrise isn't playing around.

See you Wednesday.

Before coffee. Before the chaos.