Morgan County officials approve rezoning for proposed 391-acre data center

Morgan County’s Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a rezoning request for a 391-acre site in the northern part of the county, paving the way for a planned data center campus.

The three-person board voted to rezone the property from agricultural and residential to a planned unit development, or PUD, for the purpose of constructing a five-building campus. The rezoning request was made by the Morgan County Economic Development Corp. on behalf of an unnamed developer and end user.

The vote, which took place at a public meeting Tuesday evening at the Morgan County Administration Building in Martinsville, came after the board heard from multiple residents expressing their opposition to the project. Those opponents erupted in boos and shouts of displeasure after the commissioners voted to approve the rezoning.

The site in question is in Monroe Township, just east of the town of Monrovia. The property’s boundaries are Keller Hill Road to the north, North Antioch Road to the east, Indiana 42 to the south and West Union Church Road to the west.

The property is currently made up of 18 different parcels of land owned by 10 different entities. Morgan County EDC Executive Director Mike Dellinger has said the project’s developer has secured purchase options with the owners and plans to acquire the land if the project moves forward.

Residents voiced a variety of concerns about the proposed data center, including its effect on neighboring homes’ property values, noise pollution from construction and from the data center itself, and a lack of transparency about the project.

Randall McKee, of Mooresville, said he believes the data center would be better suited for an industrial park. “We all know what [artificial intelligence] is all about and we know it’s going to demand a lot of computing, but it doesn’t have to go next to residential neighborhoods,” McKee told commissioners. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to the owners of these homes, like me and my family, that you would approve the degradation of our homes for a [big] company to come in and build these buildings.”

Heather Kistler, of Mooresville, said she lives across the street from the proposed data center site and expressed dismay that attendance has diminished over the course of several public meetings, including a community information session and the county Plan Commission meeting, both held earlier this month.

“Please listen to what all of us have to say,” Kistler told commissioners. “The crowd has dwindled through each meeting because we feel like it’s done deal—there’s nothing else that we can say. This is going to happen. But please listen.”

Before casting their votes, two of the three commissioners took the opportunity to explain why they were voting for the rezoning. The third commissioner, Bryan Collier, did not offer remarks.

Commissioner Kenny Hale acknowledged the dissenting points of view on the matter: “We can’t make everybody happy.”

But Hale, who said he had unsuccessfully tried to bring a previous data center project to the Interstate 69 corridor (then Indiana 37) years ago, said his continuing interest is in diversifying the county’s tax revenue stream beyond residential.

Commissioner Don Adams acknowledged that the data center will bring change, especially in Monrovia, but he said the data center, and the jobs it will bring, will be a positive force.

“Your concerns are being heard,” Adams told the group, “but I see a future and I have faith in it.”