Trump promotes data centers and power plants for growth
Trump says data centers and power plants bring jobs, tax revenue and growth, urging communities to welcome new development.
Indianapolis passed a first-of-its-kind data center moratorium Aug. 19 that prohibits developers from asking to build data centers in the city for more than a year.
The Metropolitan Development Commission, a board of appointed real estate professionals who control zoning in the city, unanimously delivered the final vote approving a temporary ban on new data centers within the city limits through the end of 2027. It’s in effect immediately.
For Indianapolis residents and advocates who have been campaigning for a data center moratorium for as long as 18 months, it was a big day.
Bryce Gustafson, program organizer at the Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer advocacy group in Indiana, described the feeling as a weight off his chest.
“It gives me hope that elected officials are listening to people,” Gustafson said. “This has become the biggest issue, in my view, across the state of Indiana as far as public engagement and it’s uniting communities unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
Over the past year and a half, data centers have captured the attention of the Indianapolis public, starting with a Google proposal to build a hyperscale data center on the far southeast side of the city. Residents living near the site banded together in opposition. Facing an uphill battle, Google eventually withdrew the proposal.
Since then, a dedicated group of environmental advocates and progressives have donned red shirts week after week at public meetings on data centers. They’ve formed volunteer community advocate groups, attended hours of public debate and held dozens of press conferences outlining concerns about data centers, including high water usage, large electricity demands and noise. Gustafson hopes the public has a seat at the table going forward.
“There’s going to have to be regulations put in place,” he said.
With the moratorium, Marion County joins more than 20 Indiana counties that have put in place temporary bans, set to expire at various points over the next year or so, according to data collected by the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute. A handful of counties have passed ordinances blocking data centers indefinitely.
The Indianapolis moratorium came to the MDC with the endorsement of Mayor Joe Hogsett, the sponsorship of Council President Maggie Lewis and support from all but one city councilor.
Large groups of unionized construction workers, who did not support a moratorium, stood silently behind data center developers at most of the previous public meetings, eager for the hundreds of construction jobs the developments provide.
However, the moratorium will not change the fate of three data center projects already approved by the development commission this year.
At one point during the Aug. 19 hearing, a person in the crowd disrupted the meeting and pressed the MDC to go back and retroactively prohibit three data centers that already received permission to build earlier this year. But data centers in Martindale Brightwood, Decatur Township and on the east side will continue to move forward in tax incentive negotiations, and eventually, construction, because zoning changes cannot be retroactively changed based on new regulations.
Though the City-County Council overwhelmingly supported the moratorium, two city-county councilors gave drastically different speeches seconds before the Commission’s final vote.
Councilor Dan Boots, who represents District 3 on the north side, said the council saw an opportunity to take time to pause and reflect on how to regulate data centers in the city. Boots stressed that the council is “not necessarily voting against data centers,” but rather using the temporary ban as a mechanism in their toolkit.
“We think it is an important tool,” Boots said.
Indianapolis is already home to several operating colocation data centers that have been renting out space to tenants such as large corporate companies, local hospital systems and banks for years.
Boots said the city allocated some money for the city to undertake studies on future data centers, referring to $150,000 set aside for industry research.
Notably, the data center ordinance will end shortly after the 2027 city-wide general election. Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, the District 20 representative on the southeast side, said he’s worried that all upcoming data center proposals will simply be pushed to 2028, when a new city-county council and potentially a new mayor is in office. He argued that developers are still going to be studying sites and crafting blueprints.
“We are smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Hart said.
Boots reminded the MDC that the overwhelming majority of the Council wanted the temporary ban in place.
“The lion’s share of the council are for the moratorium,” Boots said.
The moratorium gives development officials more time to study how they want to regulate data centers. As part of the moratorium agreement, the Department of Metropolitan Development will hire a consultant and create an advisory committee to make recommendations on public engagement steps. A consultant and committee will be in place by September, a Department of Metropolitan Development spokesperson said.
Alysa Guffey writes business and development stories for IndyStar. Have a story tip? Contact her at alysa.guffey@indystar.com.