Data center projects facing local pushback

Over the past several months, Andrew Filler of Indianapolis estimates, he’s spent hundreds of hours fighting an unknown opponent.

Filler and his family live on Vandergriff Road in Franklin Township, directly across the street from a 468-acre agricultural site that, if the opponent has its way, will be the site of Indianapolis’ first hyperscale data center.

At this point, the entity behind the project is publicly identifying itself only as Deep Meadow Ventures LLC. The LLC’s public face is Barnes & Thornburg LLP partner Joe Calderon, who is representing the entity and has spoken about the project at a series of public meetings.

Since March, when the first public information meeting about the proposed data center took place, Filler and other residents have been vocal in their concerns and opposition to the project. They’ve spoken out at meetings and online, contacted public officials, made protest signs and launched an online petition that has drawn more than 3,000 signatures so far.

“We’re going to kick and scream until we can’t scream no more. We’re going to be as loud as we can,” Filler said.

Filler and his neighbors are part of an emerging dynamic in the Indianapolis area and beyond: the operators working to build data centers here vs. the neighbors trying to stop them.

Since the beginning of the year, developers have come forward with plans to build four data center projects in the Indianapolis area—one each in Marion, Morgan, Hendricks and Hancock counties. (A fifth proposed project for Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., in the LEAP Research and Innovation District in Boone County, was announced last November.)

Although the four projects are still in the planning stage, each would occupy hundreds of acres on undeveloped land. The sites would eventually house multiple buildings, each essentially a large warehouse filled with servers and equipment to power the world’s ever-growing demand for computing power.

Another common factor: All the projects have been the target of organized community opposition from residents concerned about potential noise pollution, water and electricity demands, environmental damage, reduced home values and other matters.

Calderon, the attorney representing the still-unnamed operator in the Franklin Township project, is also representing the yet-to-be-named operator in the Morgan County project.

Calderon said public pushback is an expected part of the process when it comes to development cases—especially when the development is slated for large and undeveloped sites.

“There are certain issues that pop up in almost every development case,” Calderon said. “So my job is to advise the client what the certain concerns are, here’s how we manage it, to make people as comfortable as I can. And a lot of it is just very organic negotiation.”

Calderon said the Franklin Township project has made 35 specific commitments based on feedback from neighbors. Those commitments include things like the height of berms that could shield the view of the site, the locations of buildings within the site and level of noise that will be allowed.

Until a few years ago, Indiana was not on the map when it came to large-scale data centers. That began to change in 2019, when Indiana lawmakers passed a new type of economic development incentive specifically designed to attract them. The law offers significant tax breaks of up to 50 years for operators of qualified data centers.

Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Indianapolis-based advocacy group Citizens Action Coalition, said his organization is tracking more than two dozen data center projects around the state.

As the number of proposals increases, Olson said, so does community opposition. To date, he said, four proposed projects around the state have been withdrawn because of community opposition: three in Porter County—in Valparaiso, Chesterton and Porter—and one in the Monroe County town of Ellettsville.

“I think as folks recognize the extraordinary infrastructure needs of these facilities with respect to water and energy, a lack of meaningful local job creation and tax contributions, I think folks are a little leery of what’s going on here,” Olson said.

Mixed receptions

Not everyone is dead set against the data centers.

“I feel very positive about the impact it will have on the community,” Morgan County Commissioner Don Adams said about the project proposed in his county.

Adams said he signed a nondisclosure agreement so he could learn the identity of the end user of that project. Armed with that knowledge, he called the chamber of commerce in a different state where that same end user already has data center operations.

A representative of that chamber said the group is “delighted” to have the end user in the community and that the company offers community entrepreneurship classes and is “very generous” in its community support, Adams said. He believes the company will interact with Morgan County in a similar manner.

Adams said he understands residents’ fear of change but thinks some concerns about the data center are unfounded—particularly the apprehension about noise pollution. Adams said he measured the decibel levels of an existing power plant on Blue Bluff Road and found that site emits more noise than what the data center is projected to generate.

Another plus for the county, Adams said, is that the data center project will generate needed tax revenue. The IEDC has granted state tax abatements, Adams pointed out, but the data center would still pay property taxes from which Morgan County would benefit.

Opposition tactics

For those who are against the projects, opposition has taken a variety of forms.

In their efforts to fight the unnamed data center operator in their community, Filler and his neighbors have formed a grassroots group called Protect Franklin Township.

To publicize their cause, group members have launched a website, Facebook page and an online petition. They’ve posted yard signs and attended public meetings to voice their views.

Filler said he and his neighbors are taking a grassroots approach to their opposition. He said he’s been told it would take at least $25,000 to hire an attorney—something that’s beyond the neighbors’ financial reach.

But opponents of other local projects have taken their disputes to court.

Several weeks after the Morgan County Board of Commissioners voted to rezone a 391-acre site in the northern part of the county for a proposed data center, two Mooresville property owners filed a lawsuit challenging the rezoning.

In their complaint, filed March 20 in Morgan Superior Court, Susan Boulianne and Teresa Moore ask the court to vacate the rezoning decision. Among their other arguments, the plaintiffs allege that the rezoning decision was unlawful because there was no public notice that identified the developer or the end user for the project.

The Morgan County Economic Development Corp. filed the rezoning request on behalf of a developer and end user whose identities have not been publicly released.

The Morgan County lawsuit is pending. Indianapolis attorney Anne Lynette Cowgur of Paganelli Law Group LLC, who is representing the Morgan County Board of Commissioners, declined to comment on the case.

And in Hendricks County, where in March the Pittsboro Town Council approved the rezoning of a 626-acre parcel in the northeast corner of the town, eight Pittsboro residents have filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop a planned data center.

The developer of that project, Denver-based Vantage Data Centers, was the one that requested the rezoning.

In that lawsuit, filed in April in Hendricks County, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the county’s annexation and zoning decision void and to prevent the defendants from doing any work on the data center project, including the issuance of permits. That case is pending.

Vantage and Pittsboro Town Council President Jarod Baker did not respond to emails seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Impact so far

To date, community opposition campaigns have not killed any data center projects in central Indiana, although one or two appear to be on hold or are being reconsidered. In fact, during its quarterly meeting in June, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. approved incentives for planned hyperscale data centers in Marion, Morgan and Hancock counties. (The IEDC also approved incentives for a fourth hyperscale data center in La Porte County during that meeting.)

Although the IEDC referred to the projects only by code names, Calderon confirmed to IBJ that the approved Marion and Morgan County projects are the ones he has been involved with. And the Shelbyville developer behind the Hancock County project said he’s not aware of any other proposed data projects in Hancock County.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission is set to vote on the Franklin County rezoning request at its July 16 meeting.

The Franklin Township Civic League, which has hosted multiple public meetings about the data center and has pressed for specifics on the project, wrote a letter of support for the rezoning—with some caveats.

“In offering our support, we remain concerned about the environmental, infrastructure and financial impacts of the proposed development and anticipate that the petitioner will choose to move forward as a true partner that continues to work with the community to ensure a project that minimizes impacts to the surrounding neighborhood and sets a high standard for responsive and responsible development,” the letter says in part.

Cathy Burton, who is the civic league’s land use chair, said her organization got the developer to agree to 35 specific project commitments above and beyond city-required minimums.

One of the most significant commitments, Burton said, involves the developer’s agreeing to pay for any infrastructure upgrades that might be needed to adequately serve the data center’s water, sewer and electricity needs. This commitment is designed to protect local residents from being on the hook for rate increases related to the data center, Burton said.

Another commitment deals with noise levels—a common concern expressed by opponents in Franklin Township and elsewhere. The commitment says the maximum noise level is not to exceed 65 decibels at the property line, and that decibel readings must be taken at least monthly, with results accessible to the public. For reference, 65 decibels falls between the noise of a dishwasher (roughly 60 decibels) and a vacuum cleaner (roughly 70 decibels).

Mike Dellinger, executive director of the Morgan County EDC, said the data center project in his county continues to move forward.

But the public outcry over the local projects has had some impact.

In May, Shelbyville-based Surge Development LLC withdrew its rezoning request for the Hancock County site where it had eyed building a data center complex, for which it did not yet have a specific end user.

That project would have been just west of Tuttle Orchards, a fourth-generation family-owned farm that includes a farm store, café and U-pick apple orchard.

Tuttle Orchards launched a petition against the proposed data center and emailed customers telling them how to contact local officials and oppose the plan.

Surge principal Chris King told IBJ his firm is “still actively evaluating options” for the property, which might still include a data center. King said advanced manufacturing might also be an option for the site.

“I think [with] any effort moving forward, we’d be focused on presenting specific information and focused on educating the community about impacts and potential benefits of any project that would be proposed,” King said.

(King is also a member of the IEDC’s board. He recused himself from last week’s IEDC meeting before the data centers were discussed. He did not vote on incentives for any of the four projects.)

The status of the Hendricks County project is unclear. Baker, the Pittsboro Town Council president, told IBJ via email that he considers the project to be on hold because he has heard conflicting information about its status.

And at a public meeting about the Franklin Township project last week, the city-county councilor who represents that district said he opposes it.

District 20 Councilor Michael-Paul Hart said the 20 or so people who showed up at the meeting in opposition to the data center represent “just a small fraction” of the people he’s talked to about the project in recent months. About 30% of those people support the project, he said, with the other 70% against it.

“I’m their voice. They elected me, and that’s what I’m here to do … listen to what they have to say, their concerns,” Hart said.

Filler said the hundreds of hours he’s spent so far fighting the Franklin Township project are worth it because of the damage he fears the project would cause.

“I’ve worked too hard in my life for some trillion-dollar company to ruin it,” Filler said.•