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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOfficials in the Hendricks County town of Pittsboro are set to hear a rezoning request this month that could pave the way for a data center campus there.
Denver, Colorado-based Vantage Data Centers has submitted a request to rezone a 618-acre site from its current agricultural zoning to light industrial, with the plan to develop about half of that property, or 285 acres, for use as a data center.
The site is located in the northeast part of town, just north of Interstate 74 and west of County Road 500 East. An electrical transmission line traverses the property.
According to the rezoning request, the property is owned by the Charles D. Smith Family Farm Inc.
The Pittsboro Plan Commission is set to consider the rezoning request at a public meeting Feb. 25. The request, and the commission’s recommendation of that request, will then go before the Pittsboro Town Council, though the earliest that will happen is March 18, said council President Jarod Baker.
If the rezoning request is granted, Baker said, several other things would have to happen before construction could begin—including a site plan review and consideration of any local economic development incentives that Vantage might request.
Baker said Vantage would be the developer and owner of the data center, operating it as a colocation center—a site with multiple tenants rather than a single user.
A common way to measure data centers is by the megawatts of electricity they consume at any given time. According to the rezoning request filed with the city of Pittsboro, the proposed data center would include three buildings, the largest of which would be a 256-megawatt facility. The others would be 96-megawatt and 48-megawatt facilities.
Vantage Data Centers currently operates 35 data center campuses in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Its U.S. sites are in Arizona, California, Ohio, Virginia and Washington state.
The company has raised billions of dollars to fuel its growth, including more than $13 billion in debt and equity investments announced Jan. 30 and a $9.2 billion equity investment announced last June.
Vantage’s proposed Pittsboro project is just the latest in a string of data center projects in the works around the state.
On Monday, the Morgan County Plan Commission is set to consider a rezoning request for a 391-acre tract in the northern part of the county. The Morgan County Economic Development Corp. is making that request on behalf of a developer and end user whose names have not been publicly released.
Several other large-scale data center projects have also been announced over the past year or so. Since late 2023, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have all announced plans for at least five hyperscale projects in Indiana. Those projects combined represent nearly $25 billion in total potential investment, with a heavy concentration in northern Indiana. Google announced last January that it had purchased 900 acres in southeast Fort Wayne for a data center development, and Meta’s 1,500-acre development in Lebanon’s LEAP Research and Innovation District was announced late last year.
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If it’s a water cooled data center (most are) they better do the research on water availability. It’s pretty limited in the Brownsburg/Pittsboro area. A single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day.
They’ll just extend the pipe headed for the LEAP district….or drain Eagle Creek. Water for others isn’t the issue…its can we build another large power consuming structure built by out of state firms that provides a few permanent, moderately paying jobs, using state and local tax breaks. Few jobs, big buildings, AI industry will think Indiana, and Central Indiana, is a really cool place.
Sweet! Because of Lucas Oil Stadium, Grand Park, the Palladium, and the two arenas in Noblesville and Fishers, central Indiana wins another economic development coup.
Eric, a Buc-ees would offer better job prospects to Hoosiers than a data center.
Another data center? About as exciting as another call center. What data centers need is a lot of land and resources, but not that many people who are getting more “modest” paychecks. The real talent, real money, real brains behind such massive projects are on the coasts. They’re looking for cheap. Let’s not get TOO excited about this as some state and local leaders do. Central Indiana is turning into a true back-office kind of economy. Data centers, just like the giant and often-empty warehouses that have sprouted up in so many farm fields, gobble up real estate, energy, but deliver little in the way of good-paying jobs and corporate, educational and cultural enrichment.
Sad but true statement if you think long term.
David gets it. I’ve asked for months for anyone to explain how data centers lead to economic development, how they’re good for anyone but utility companies.
They’re automated distribution centers for information. At least they don’t tear up the roads with semi traffic, but they also don’t need very many local workers.