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New site proposed for $800M Lordstown power plant
the Lordstown Industrial Park on Henn Parkway on
the east side of state Route 45 just north of Hallock-Young Road.
By Ed Runyan
LORDSTOWN
Clean Energy Future Lords-town LLC was unable to get the zoning it needed to construct an $800 million, 800-megawatt gas-fired power plant on Salt Springs Road last spring, so it has selected another site that doesn’t need a zone change.
“We’re going to build a power plant,” Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill said Friday. “We didn’t want them to go [away]. We worked hard to keep them here for the schools and everybody else.”
The project will result in 500 temporary jobs during the 30-month construction phase and 23 to 28 full-time permanent jobs, Hill said.
Also, the project will involve cash payments to the schools in exchange for a tax abatement that the village will consider in the coming months.
Hill said there is relatively little this time that could stand in the way of the project’s coming to fruition. The site has 30 acres in the Lordstown Industrial Park on Henn Parkway on the east side of state Route 45 just north of Hallock-Young Road.
The company and the Ohio Power Citing Board will have a meeting from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13 at the Lordstown Village Administration Center, 1455 Salt Springs Road, to discuss the proposal.
“The spinoff will be great,” Hill said of the companies that will want to locate near the plant, slated to begin commercial operation in mid-2018. Construction is likely to begin in the fall of 2015.
The site is close to Interstate 80/76 and will be served by one or more gas pipelines, Clean Energy Future and its owner, William Siderewicz, said in an announcement.
The site is less than a half mile from power lines known as the Highland-Mansfield and Highland-Sammis circuits, the company said. The company’s earlier proposal at the site of the former Peterson Hardware a mile east of state Route 45 was right below the power lines the company needs to access to transmit power to the grid, Hill said.
Residents near the Salt Springs Road site opposed the change in zoning that was needed for the project.
“This facility will fill a need caused by the retirement in the next several years of several coal-fired generating stations in Northeast Ohio that will reduce the regional electricity capacity,” Siderewicz said in the announcement.
Using natural gas to generate electricity is much cleaner than using coal, Siderewicz has said. Gas-powered plants produce no sulfur and half as much carbon dioxide as coal-fired plants, he said.