Intel issued no news releases this week. No milestones, no delays, no funding announcements out of New Albany. But four years into the Silicon Heartland bet, the construction keeps changing central Ohio around it — in the power grid, on the roads, in the housing market, and now in the hearing rooms.
The power fight is the story now. The week’s sharpest development wasn’t Intel’s at all. It was Meta’s. A guest column in the Columbus Dispatch took aim at the four gas-fired power plants Meta wants to run behind the meter for its Prometheus data center in New Albany — 1,150 megawatts in all — citing Ohio EPA permit figures of roughly 8.3 million tons of greenhouse gases a year and 482 tons of fine particulate matter. A public hearing on the 500-megawatt Neo plant is set for Oct. 6, and Save Ohio Parks held a workshop this week teaching residents how to testify. It repeats Sep. 29.
That’s the same Licking County power market where Intel’s fab sits — and where the substation built for Intel’s delayed fab now sits idle. A national outlet recirculated the story this week that Meta and AEP Ohio want to route that idle 250 megawatts to Meta’s data center for now, with Intel’s full 500 megawatts restored in 2029. The original reporting dates to last December, so it isn’t new. But it tells you where the region’s electricity math stands.
A possible partner. Just outside this week’s window: Reuters reported Sep. 16 that SK Hynix is in exploratory talks to make memory chips at Intel’s Ohio campus, either by leasing fab space or through a joint venture with cloud providers. Intel declined to comment. It’s the first concrete potential customer for the delayed fab since the preliminary Apple chip deal reported in May — and both companies’ shares jumped on the news.
The long clock. None of this changes the timeline. The project remains in above-grade structural work, with more than 9.4 million construction hours logged as of Sep. 1 and workers drawn from 83 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Fab 1 is targeted for completion in 2030, with production in 2030–31; the second fab in 2031, with production in 2032. Equipment move-in is still years out. Intel has spent $5.26 billion on Ohio One so far.
So the near-term central Ohio story is infrastructure, not Intel jobs. LinkUS reported this week that its bus rapid transit designs are 90% complete, with 10 miles of trails in the works — framed explicitly around connecting residents to advanced-manufacturing jobs near the Intel site. A $1.6 billion fourth water treatment plant is under construction, due by 2032; Intel’s two fabs would need about 5 million gallons a day when they open. AEP Ohio has warned that greater-Columbus electricity demand could rival Manhattan’s by 2030, driven overwhelmingly by data centers. And a local realtor’s figures put New Albany’s median sale price near $825,000, up almost 30% from a year ago.
The barometer. Sen. Bernie Moreno, who a year ago floated the idea the project could be a “fraud” or “charade,” said this month he’s “extraordinarily confident” Intel is “100% committed” to finishing New Albany — then added: “does that mean it’s going to happen? Absolutely not.”
What to watch: the Oct. 6 hearing on Meta’s Neo plant, and whether the SK Hynix talks firm up or fade.
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