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Taylor & Mickey – thank you for this article.
Given the tax abatements/breaks given to this project and all of the data centers in Indiana, and the highly distributed/remote nature of IT work, it would be helpful to understand the job numbers for those employed at the actual physical data center.
That those numbers are not loudly announced as part of these negotiations leads one to believe the job numbers are underwhelming from a quantity, quality, and salary perspective.
Is it feasible to design a closed loop system for water?
On the Monrovia data center, I saw numbers around 50 jobs per building at $100k per.job. they are planning 4 buildings.
Many people focus on the 50 year tax abatement, but that appears to be for equipment. The 10 year property tax abatement is standard and sounds like it would bring in more taxes than a residential development, 1,200 homes or more, or a warehouse which are the most likely alternative uses for this field. The demand for municipal services would be much lower for this than housing
Water and electricity are municipal services.
I had seen far lower IT job numbers for another data center (less than 10) with the bulk of the other jobs being security and maintenance, not making 100K.
Again, if the job numbers were blowing us away, they’d be repeating them over and over.
We need to come together and push back against the anti-progress, anti-science, anti-property rights NIMBYS who push back on building the essential infrastructure for our state and country. Build more apartments, build more data centers, build more energy capacity.
As a society we would get much further if we asked “how can we do this the right way” instead of “can we do this?” Or worse, a reactionary “No” because “AI is scary,” or other whataboutisms.
These developments will be around for decades after tax abatements burn off, providing millions of property tax revenue for schools, roads, etc.
Our political leaders should grow a backbone and make the case why this is absolutely essential.
They should have done that before implementing changes to our tax code. All they do is waive their hands and claim “it’s the future”. Explain the benefits. It’s been six years.
One is not a NIMBY if they ask why a large building that uses large amounts of electricity and water while employing a handful of moderately paid workers is worth nine figure tax incentives.
Lastly, be around in decades? How do you know that? Computer technology changes really quickly.
Good comments.
The Indiana Economic Development Commission – IEDC – is reportedly scheduled to release a “white paper” it spent $1.25M on Massachusetts-based Boston Consulting Group preparing on the benefits/burdens of economic incentives for data centers. I’m hopeful it will list “best practices” and which communities around the country have negotiated the “best deals” that benefit local communities not only on tax revenues/payments in lieu of taxes/community benefits received but also mitigating adverse impact on power and water sources. For $1.25M – let’s hope it’s a comprehensive study that can be useful to policy makers and elected officials all around our state who are grappling with these tough issues every single day.
Good article trying to make sense of it all. Still sounds like we get screwed on the tax income.
Also seems the only construction money to be locally made is the site work and some of the building construction. We also have to figure the $600M of equipment, I.e. servers and cooling systems, etc., will not be made locally or in Indiana. Most of the interior systems will be installed by high tech IT type folks, probably from out of town. My point here is of the first Billion Dollars invested, not much is actually spent here and does not help Indiana.
The only folks that really gain in these data centers are the likes of Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc., along with AES and Citizens. We the local tax paying citizens really don’t gain much.
Ironically, this article and our comments are using a data center to be stored in. I saw one person complain we don’t need data centers and it was sent from a gmail account. That would be Goog!e.
I don’t have a problem with data centers, or even data centers being located here for that matter. Until the case can better be laid out as to the costs and benefits, though, I just don’t think they’re worthy of the very large tax breaks we are giving them, or that in a lot of cases we are asking consumers to pay for the increased utility infrastructure. High risk of socializing the costs while privatizing the benefits to a couple out of state tech firms.
The current case for them appears to be “They gotta go somewhere” or “You’re just against progress” with maybe a dash of “we are going to miss the future if we don’t move fast!”
Heck, I understand the cost/benefit of distribution centers, solar panel farms, and even the Indianapolis Colts better than I do data centers right now.
Why is Develop Indy located at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway?