Ida Huddleston and her daughter, Delsia Bare, kept their farmland after rejecting a combined offer above $26 million, while WEKU and WKYT reported Mason County approved three agreements tied to a proposed Meta data center.
WKRC and LEX 18 reported that an unnamed company approached the family in April 2025. WEKU later reported that Meta is behind the broader project, while the April buyer was not identified.
In a PEOPLE exclusive interview republished by AOL, Bare said she briefly signed a contract because she feared losing the land, then withdrew after her mother said she did not want to leave. Bare also told WKRC that the company revised its plan around land from owners who agreed to sell, a change she said could let the project proceed nearby.
Mason County’s Oct. 6 agreement summary outlines a proposed 2,900-acre campus, with one 396-megawatt data center in its first phase. Under proposed industrial revenue bond terms, Meta would receive an exemption from local property taxes, while payments in lieu of taxes would go to the county and school district.
WEKU and WKYT reported the Mason County Fiscal Court unanimously approved three project agreements Oct. 13. WKYT reported county officials projected 2,000 construction jobs and at least 400 permanent jobs. Earlier local estimates cited more than 1,500 construction jobs and 400 full-time positions. Meta described the approvals as “the first step of many,” WEKU reported.
Bare told WKRC that generations of her family have farmed the land, including relatives who grew wheat during the Great Depression. The proposed campus would convert agricultural land to industrial use. Nationally, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates U.S. data centers used 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, about 4.4% of national consumption. Its 2028 scenarios span 325 to 580 terawatt-hours. The lab’s report said AI servers accounted for much of the rise in electricity use from 2017 to 2023. Those estimates place the project in the context of national data-center electricity demand.
