LORAIN, Ohio — When Lorain Councilwoman Mary Springowski fired off an email five years ago to Intel’s CEO urging the tech giant to consider her city for its next chip manufacturing plant, she had a vision of living-wage jobs and long-neglected industrial land getting a second shot.
What she did not envision, she says, is the controversial mega site that now sits at the center of a bitter dispute over farmland, development and the future of rural Lorain County.
“This was never what I had in mind,” she said in a recent interview. “My focus was always repurposing defunct industrial sites where the infrastructure already exists. I never wanted to impact rural areas.”…