Residents yelled out, “Shame on you,” and “DC Blox has got to go,” as soon as the proposed data center on the east side of Indianapolis got its first approval from the city.
Georgia-based data center developer DC Blox is asking the city’s Metropolitan Development Commission to approve a variance to build a data center campus at the Thunderbird Commerce Center in Warren Township, the site of a former Ford factory.
The Metropolitan Development Commission’s hearing examiner recommended approving the project.
Dawn Briggs, a resident of Irvington who spoke at the rezoning hearing, said this decision will affect the community forever.
"Once decisions like this are made, there's no turning back,” she said.
The proposal now heads to the full commission for a vote. Because the developer is requesting a variance instead of a full rezoning, the City-County Council cannot override the decision.
Residents said they were skeptical of the company's promises, such as paying for the costs of higher utility use and controlling noise levels.
The proposed campus, at the corner of South Kitley Avenue and the Pennsy Trail, would include three buildings, up to a total of 420,000 square feet. The campus could use up to 78 megawatts of electricity and include 56 backup generators.
The developers have been working to position themselves as a community partner, and DC Blox’s attorney, Mindy Westrick Brown, argued that the site would provide more tax revenue as a data center than other types of developments.
The project site sits directly on the border of two city-county council districts — District 14, represented by Councilor Andy Nielsen, and District 20, represented by Councilor Michael-Paul Hart. Both councilors held public meetings with constituents and the developers.
So far, the councilors have taken different stances. At the hearing, Hart said he has not come to a conclusion on the project because he’s still waiting on the Indy Economic Development, or IED, to provide final financial projections for the project.
During his comments at the meeting, Hart acknowledged that he doesn’t have the same authority to “call down” the proposal to vote on it, like the final approval process for the proposed Google data center in Franklin Township.
“I'm the only councilor who's had multiple data center hearings up to this point, and I can wholeheartedly tell you, I know what bad looks like at this point,” he said, adding that the level of transparency he has received from DC Blox has been much better than his experience with Google.
But Nielsen said he is not in support of the project, citing a survey he distributed in which 83% of respondents opposed the proposed data center.
“It is an example of how an engaged community makes an informed decision about what they want their neighbor to look, neighborhood to look like in the future, and it is not one steeped in anti-development fervor,” he said at the hearing.
The Department of Metropolitan Development proposed regulations on data centers, but those rules would not apply to projects approved before the rules take effect.
Briggs, the Irvington resident, said the community is not opposed to technology or progress, but is concerned because of the uncertainty how the development could affect the community long-term.
“We've heard promises [and] we've heard assurances that everything will be fine,” she said. “But promises are not the same as proven facts, and assurances are not the same as enforceable commitments.”
Data centers have become central to Indiana's economic development pitch to tech companies, but their enormous appetite for electricity puts them in tension with a parallel fight over rising utility bills.
Gov. Mike Braun signed a law this year aimed at reining in utility rates, though critics argue that bringing in large-scale power consumers makes controlling those rates harder.
Farrah Anderson is WFYI's investigative health reporter. You can follow her on X at @farrahsoa or by email at fanderson@wfyi.org
