Morgan County planners recommend approval for proposed data-center campus

Plans for a data-center campus in Morgan County moved forward Monday night when the county’s Plan Commission gave a favorable recommendation to a rezoning request for a 391-acre site on which the five-building project would be developed.

During the meeting at the Morgan County Administration Building in Martinsville, which lasted over three-and-a-half hours, more than two dozen residents spoke out about the project—most of them in opposition.

The rezoning request concerns a tract of land in Morgan Township that is currently zoned for agricultural and residential use. Located 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 Morgan County Plan Commission is an advisory board, meaning that it does not approve or deny zoning requests. Rather, it makes a recommendation that is passed along to the Morgan County Board of Commissioners. The plan commission voted 7-1 to make a favorable recommendation for the rezoning request.

The three-person board of commissioners is set to consider the request at its Feb. 18 meeting.

The Morgan County Economic Development Corp. is requesting the rezoning on behalf of a developer and end users whose identities have not yet been made public. The EDC is requesting that the site be rezoned as a planned unit development, or PUD, for the purpose of building a data center.

Speaking at Monday’s meeting on behalf of the petitioners, attorney Joe Calderon of Indianapolis-based law firm Barnes & Thornburg LLP said the data-center buildings will be set back 150 feet from the edge of the property, according to the site plan, with landscaped berms that are at least 10 feet tall to buffer the property from neighbors.

Residents raised a wide range of concerns about the proposed data center regarding its potential heavy power and water usage, its impact on traffic, the noise pollution it could create and its effect on local property values.

Several speakers said they are unhappy that the identities of the developer and end user have not been made public. Some of the speakers said they’re also uneasy that several key components of the project—projected traffic impact, jobs creation, energy needs and water usage for cooling computing equipment—are yet unknown.

“As we sit here tonight, we do not even know if it is a good project for our community, because we just don’t have enough information,” said Monrovia Town Council President Tammy Everett. “This project will absolutely impact our town. It will be right outside of our boundaries, like less than 100 feet from our boundaries.”

A handful of residents spoke in favor of the project, citing its potential for economic development and job creation.

According to the rezoning application, the 391-acre site is made up of 18 different parcels of land owned by 10 different entities. Morgan County EDC Executive Director Mike Dellinger said the project’s unnamed developer has secured purchase options with the owners and plans to acquire the land if the project moves forward. Dellinger declined to say when the options are set to expire. It’s unknown at this point how much the purchaser might spend to acquire the land.

Indiana has been the site of several large-scale data center announcements 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.