Pittsboro advisory commission recommends data-center rezoning request

Planning officials in the Hendricks County town of Pittsboro are recommending approval for a rezoning request made by a Denver, Colorado-based company that hopes to build a data center campus on a 626-acre site on the northeast side of town.

The property, owned by Charles D. Smith Family Farm Inc. and currently zoned for agricultural use, is just north of Interstate 74 and west of County Road 500 East. Pittsboro leaders annexed the site into the town late last year.

Denver-based Vantage Data Centers is requesting that the site be rezoned to light industrial use, which would allow the company to build a colocation data center campus—a site with multiple tenants rather than a single user.

At the conclusion of a public meeting Tuesday evening at which several residents spoke out—both in opposition to and in support of the project—the Pittsboro Advisory Plan Commission voted 4-1 to recommend approval of Vantage’s rezoning request.

The commission is an advisory board, meaning that it does not approve or deny zoning requests. Rather, its recommendation will be passed along to Pittsboro Town Council, which will vote on whether to grant the rezoning request.

The town council is set to consider the rezoning request at its March 18 meeting.

Plans filed with the town of Pittsboro call for the data center campus to occupy about 285 acres of the 626-acre property and include multiple one- or two-story structures with facades that make them look like office buildings.

Initial plans show three buildings, the largest of which would be a 256-megawatt facility. The others would be 96-megawatt and 48-megawatt facilities. A common way to measure data centers is by the megawatts of electricity they consume at any given time.

Pittsboro resident Brett Murphy, who said he lives about half-mile east of the proposed project, said he supports the proposed data center.

“When I look at what the potential could be for this property, I consider that this is really an excellent option,” he said. “I would much rather see this over a pig farm, over a concrete plant, over a prison, over a steel mill.”

Murphy said he is a member of his neighborhood’s homeowners’ association, which is choosing to remain neutral and not take a position on the project.

A few residents voiced concerns over the location of the project and the commercial development it might spark around it, especially since the data center would occupy less than half of the acreage of the property considered for rezoning.

Pittsboro resident Matt Mazelin asked town officials to be discerning about what might come next on that site. “We want to make sure that we’re looking at not bringing in just whatever, whoever wants to build after this,” he said.

In particular, Mazelin said he does not want to see retail stores, strip malls and restaurants on the site, particularly because Pittsboro has other sites closer to Interstate 74 that are better suited for that type of commercial development.

Voicing their objections via a letter that was read aloud at the meeting, Robert and Shannon Laatz said they opposed the rezoning because they believe it would hurt nearby homeowner property values, create noise pollution and extra traffic, deplete wildlife and affect water and power supplies.

Because data centers are filled with continuously running computer systems and networking equipment, the sites require cooling systems so that the equipment does not overheat. Typically, data centers use either air-cooled or water-cooled systems.

The Pittsboro Advisory Plan Commission’s staff report says the facility would use an air-cooled system to keep the facility and its equipment cool. Because the facility will be air-cooled rather than water-cooled, Pittsboro’s water system has “plenty of capacity” to serve the data center and other potential new residential and business customers, the report says.

Wabash Power Alliance and Hendricks Power Cooperative would supply power to the site. An electrical transmission line traverses the property.

Once the venter is running, Vantage estimates it would have about 100 employees working at the campus. The facility’s tenants would likely also have some of their own staff on site.

Pittsboro is not the only central Indiana site where developers hope to build a data center.

Morgan County’s three-member Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a rezoning request last week for a 391-acre site in the northern part of the county where an undisclosed developer and end user plan to build a data center campus.

Indiana has also been the site of several other 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.