Barren data center suits proceed
Published 6:00 am Thursday, August 27, 2026
A pair of lawsuits concerning a proposed data center development in Cave City will be consolidated.
The first court hearing in the two cases was held Monday in Barren Circuit Court, with attorneys discussing the status of the legal proceedings.
Kentucky Industrial Alliance owns a large tract of land in Cave City where it is seeking to build a large-scale data center, working with a developer, the OTN Group.
The Cave City City Council approved in May a year-long moratorium on all data centers, leading to KIA filing a lawsuit in June against the council, the city of Cave City and the Joint City-County Planning Commission.
In that suit, KIA has requested the court issue an injunction that would prevent the city from enforcing its moratorium and allow the data center application to go forward under zoning regulations that were in place when it submitted its application to the planning commission.
Cave City has filed a motion to dismiss that suit, contending that KIA’s legal challenge to the moratorium lacks merit and is based on incomplete application paperwork submitted to the commission.
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The other lawsuit, also filed in June by KIA, challenges Cave City’s decision to annex the land at issue, with KIA alleging that the annexation should be invalidated because Cave City officials did not obtain written consent to annex from the owner of a small cemetery located within the larger tract.
Cave City has countered that KIA lacks legal standing to ask for the annexation to be overturned because the group’s interests have not been harmed by the annexation.
Attorney Aaron Smith, representing Cave City, said all parties generally agreed Monday to consolidate both lawsuits into one matter, and that Barren Circuit Judge John Alexander would address the annexation issue first.
“The reason for that (would be) that if the property was not appropriately annexed then the moratorium wouldn’t apply to that property anyway, so the judge has to decide if the annexation is appropriate before whether the moratorium applies,” Smith said.
Smith said the discovery process would get underway regarding the annexation issue, with all sides gathering evidence and preparing arguments to submit to Alexander ahead of a ruling.
A status conference has been set for Nov. 23.
“At that time, we’ll see where we are and if we’re ready at that point to set a briefing schedule to get the issues briefed so that (Alexander) has everything he needs to decide the issue,” Smith said.
