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Chapter 2 of 6 · the story

How it was assembled & hidden

Before there is a campus, there is land — and how it was put together is its own record. The farms weren’t bought by the developer outright. The public Port Authority of Allen County took three-year options on them in 2023–24, for $1,000 apiece, then assigned those options to Bistrozzi on 2025-07-03 — using each option’s §21 “unrestricted right to assign to a nominee.” The public body held the door; a Delaware LLC walked through it.

Record Teardown

The land-assembly packet

Port Authority options → Bistrozzi assignment · 2023–2025
Option agreements + DTE-100s · scanned
① The source · annotated
seller-land-packets.land.yaml
PRR
⤓ View source on request
$ ______ · blank
1
2
3
PRR-01-bundle pp. 91–295 (option packets) · AEDG · land assembly (PAAC production)
Option terms and assignment dates are transcribed from the PAAC production; the DTE-100 price fields were produced blank in the source itself.
② What we read
1
A public body's options assigned to a nominee — §21 “unrestricted right to assign”
2025-07-03 assignment
2
CAUV farmland → conversion triggers tax recoupment (Elida LSD)
DTE-102 filed
3
Conveyance-fee price fields produced blank
DTE-100 · $ blank
③ What it reveals

The public's development authority optioned the farms for $1,000 apiece, assigned the options to a Delaware LLC, and closed — and the one form that records what was paid, the DTE-100, was produced with the price blank. Only the Neighbors parcel's ~$600k for 5 acres is disclosed anywhere. The land was assembled through a public body and handed off; what it cost to convert CAUV farmland into a data-center campus is the blank.

④ How to check it
[verified]options + assignment dates
$ ______ · blank What did the public pay to assemble it?
Brenneman DTE-100 Real Property Conveyance Fee Statement of Value — the numbered value lines with the dollar column produced blank.
$ blank
DTE-100 value lines · produced blank
the lock

The DTE-100 conveyance-fee value fields were produced blank across the option / closing packets; only the Neighbors parcel (~$600k / 5 ac, ~2× appraisal) is disclosed anywhere.

The Port Authority — a public body — took the options and assigned them to Bistrozzi; the price across the assembled tracts is absent from the one form built to record it. CAUV farmland converting to a data center triggers tax recoupment, but the figure that would size the public's exposure is the blank.

Hold that blank up to the light, though, and it isn’t quite empty. The DTE-100 conveyance-fee statement — the form built to record the price — was produced with its value lines blank. But the deed the county actually recorded carries a second number the parties don’t control: a conveyance fee, stamped by the auditor and set by statute in proportion to the sale price. The Pike Run parcel’s deed shows a $1,041 conveyance fee; the Neff Farms transfer, $25,572.90. A fee that scales with the price is a price in disguise — the figure the DTE-100 left blank is reconstructable from the recorder’s own arithmetic at the county’s published rate. The blank is a formality, not a vault: the public record priced the land even where the parties declined to. [inference] — the rate is statutory, the back-calculation ours.

But the sharper tell isn’t any single blank — it’s the order. Read the dated instruments in sequence and a pattern falls out: the confidentiality went on first, before the public benefit was voted, before the land was recorded, and long before anyone outside the room could say whose data center this is. The sequence is the argument.

The order is the argument

Confidentiality went on first — before the abatement was voted, before the land was recorded, and long before the public could name who is behind it.

  1. Confidentiality goes on — Mutual NDA (Res #417-25)

    The County authorizes a Mutual NDA with Bistrozzi (executed 2025-07-01) — a notify-and-minimize protocol agreed before any public-records request could be answered.

    timeline · Res #417-25 (2025-05-27) · NDA executed 2025-07-01
  2. The public benefit is voted — CRA approved (Res #548-25)

    The 75% / 15-year tax abatement is approved — first deliberated in a closed (G)(8) session on 2025-05-27, behind the NDA.

    timeline · Res #548-25 (2025-07-10)
  3. The land moves — deeds recorded → BISTROZZI LLC

    Three Limited Warranty Deeds convey the assembled farms to a Delaware LLC — for “valuable consideration,” the price left blank on the DTE-100s.

    timeline · deeds 202508130008300 / …312 / …316 (2025-08-13)
  4. 2026-03-16
    The customer is confirmed: Google

    Google is the data-center customer — [verified]: AEDG's release names a Google official (Molly Kocour Boyle), the allencountydatacenter.com community site launches, and Google testifies to the Ohio Select Committee (Liz Schwab). The point of the sequence is the timing — the public confirmation comes ~10 months after the NDA, last, not first. (In the entity graph Google is an annotation, not a node: it's the customer, not a party to the deal mechanics — a method choice, not an open question.)

    AEDG release 2026-03-16 (Molly Kocour Boyle) · allencountydatacenter.com · Liz Schwab (Google) committee testimony · annotation in the graph, not a node
Open the full 232-event timeline →

And the sequence doesn’t end where the timeline does. The farm deeds of August 2025 weren’t the close of the assembly — they were the middle of it. The buying continued well past the point the public learned whose project this was: a five-acre Neighbors parcel passed to Bistrozzi on 2026-03-04 for a recited consideration of one dollar, and a 7.2-acre Pieper tract was conveyed on 2026-04-21 — not to Bistrozzi LLC, but to a new entity, Bistrozzi Addition LLC, registered with the Ohio Secretary of State only two weeks earlier (2026-04-08) and organized by the same Vorys attorney behind the original shells. The campus is still growing, and so is the cluster of names it grows under — the same pattern the first chapter read, running a year on. [verified], from the recorded deeds and the SoS filing.

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