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The Indiana Economic Development Corp. is seeking approval to funnel $60 million toward further property acquisitions and infrastructure development at its LEAP Research and Innovation District in Boone County, according to the State Budget Committee’s December agenda.
The state’s job-creation agency is seeking $27 million to purchase about 307 acres and pay for deposits and option payments for additional land west of Interstate 65. The land would be dedicated to its two publicly announced tenants: Meta and Eli Lilly and Co.
Eli Lilly is building a foundry for advanced manufacturing and drug development at the LEAP development. Its planned investment at the district totals more $13 billion.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is planning to build a facility focused on data center operations on 1,500 acres at the south end of the park. So far, the company has committed to a $800 million investment in what is the first of a potentially six-phase development with an investment of up to $4.8 billion
It also seeks $33 million to continue infrastructure development at LEAP, specifically focused on these two projects. Improvements include roadwork and water and wastewater support around the sites. (LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace.)
More money is being requested to support an extension of the Citizens Energy system that would send 25 million gallons of water per day to LEAP and other Boone County developments.
The IEDC is requesting an additional $25 million to be held in an Indiana Finance Authority debt service reserve fund that will be used to secure bond financing. The budget committee approved $50 million to support bonds and provide debt service coverage in August.
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Data centers are not good investments. They create few jobs, take huge amounts of resources, including land, energy, and water. So many better ways to spend this kind of money.
completely agree, but seems to be the way the state is moving. Out with the corn, in with the data centers.
Also agree. We aren’t going to have the workforce, so may as well give us.
Let’s see $27 million divided by 307 acres comes out to $87,947/acre from the taxpayers to Meta and Lilly. Isn’t that a warm and fuzzy feeling?
If the state is going to truly make this a innovative development, waste water management and reuse would reduce the long term water needs and really make this a “LEAP” project. Starting a project this size from scratch opens up a whole realm of technological advances in infrastructure offerings.
Which should beg – and should always have begged – the question: What could YOUR town do with a $60,000,000 handout from Uncle Eric? And why isn’t YOUR town being paved with gold like little Lebanon? “Because [water-poor] Lebanon is partway between hither and yon, strategically located on the magical new BS Corridor”? (ha haaa! Dupes! Patsies! Saps!) Now that Holcomb, the IEDC and it’s current & previous honchos, Mitch Daniels, etc etc have sold Hoosiers this bag of magic beans, despite the obvious answer to the questions going unasked by the IBJ, every other media outlet, Democrats, etc, Hoosiers deserve the reputation as the biggest suckers in U.S. history. It’s this simple, and most Hoosiers know that this (good ol’ boy deals) is how politics works in Indiana, yet nobody will talk about THE MAYOR’S DADDY, who “was the architect of the effort by Republicans to take back the Indiana Statehouse after years of Democrat rule.”
http://markitred.com/the-mark-it-red-team/
Sure, blame the media and the Democrats. Here’s the reality – most of Indiana, which is bleeding population every which way, benefits from the economic activity around a few big cities. They get lots of money from the state. Most have freshly paved highways paid for by Marion or Hamilton County taxpayers.
They’re trying to build an Indiana version of Research Triangle Park. Lebanon happens to be in the right place if you draw a triangle between West Lafayette, Terre Haute (Rose Hulman), and Indianapolis. I suspect connections play a part but so does being in the right place at the right time.
The IEDC, city, and state should act quickly to bar Meta and any other tech data centers from the site. These are bad investments.