An Atlanta-based company is seeking to build a major data center at the Thunderbird Commerce Center, an industrial park on the east side of Indianapolis that took the place of the former Ford Visteon plant.
Company executives at DC Blox detailed plans for the proposed project, which would be built off of the Pennsy Trail and in close proximity to Irvington Community Elementary School, in a winding community open house at the Warren Township Schools administration building that ended just before 10 p.m. on May 21.
The company plans to spend $800 million to build three data halls, but the real money would come from customers who could invest more than $1 billion in on-site servers. DC Blox estimates the investment could total $2.2 billion.
They pitched the large investment as a potential benefit to the east side.
“You could have a warehouse on the same site, and over a 10-year period that could generate $3.9 million in total tax revenue, or you can put a data center on the same site with all the parameters that we’ve been talking about tonight, and generate almost $32 million on that same piece of property,” David Armistead, senior vice president of sales for DC Blox, told attendees. “There may be things that you don’t like about data centers for whatever reason … but this can be transformative to the east side.”
But attendees wondered whether the project on a brownfield and near neighborhoods would create environmental hazards, particularly because it will require 56 on-site diesel generators that will be tested monthly.
The property is zoned I-3, intended for heavy industrial use, which does not support building a data center. Similarly to the path taken by Sabey Data Centers for a date center project in Decatur Township, DC Blox is requesting a variance rather than a full rezoning of the property to accommodate the data center use.
The project will receive an initial hearing June 11 at 1 p.m. from the Metropolitan Development Commission Hearing Examiner.
Here’s a roundup of the information company leaders shared with the public.
Buildout plans
In total, DC Blox plans to build a data center campus totaling 410,000 square feet, with a capacity of 78 megawatts and including 56 on-site diesel generators.
Pending city approvals, the company plans to break ground this fall and spend 15 to 18 months constructing the first building on the east side of the 32-acre parcel. The one-story, 80,000-square-foot building would have a capacity of 10 megawatts and require six backup diesel generators.
Armistead said the first building would not support artificial intelligence users. For the subsequent two buildings that would be constructed over the following two to three years, customers could be involved in artificial intelligence, he said.
Both buildings in DC Blox’s planned second phase of construction would be two stories tall and be more intensive than the first in regard to capacity and data storage.
The second would be 140,000 square feet, use 20 megawatts of power and require 14 backup generators, while the third would be 190,000 square feet, use 48 megawatts and need 36 backup generators.
DC Blox has committed to using local union labor on this project. About 650 workers will be employed for the construction process.
Utility use
Once fully built, water use for the data center campus would be similar to that of a typical commercial building or 11 households, senior vice president of data center construction Michael Clark said.
The first structure would be air-cooled in a method similar to a large retail building, like a Target. The subsequent buildings would have closed-loop water cooling systems.
Clark said the water usage will be about 2,200 gallons per day.
The campus will use up to 78 megawatts of energy. That will come partially from an existing onsite substation, and AES Indiana has provided a letter to the company stating that it will provide the amount of power the development needs.
Clark said that both DC Blox and AES Indiana are confident the utility has the capacity for the first building, but that the Indianapolis company will likely need to upgrade infrastructure for the next two data halls. DC Blox has committed to paying the cost of the upgrades.
Additionally, some of the power might come from renewable sources. DC Blox will be enrolled in a “Green Power Flex Program” to source clean energy from sources such as Midwest wind farms.
Noise
The noise level from humming generators and cooling systems cannot exceed 56 decibels at the property line, per the company’s commitments. Generators will be placed within insulated enclosures to muffle sound.
Company leaders said an acoustic engineer will do a sound study once the facility is operational and as it grows to ensure it meets that threshold. When it does not, DC Blox will invest in equipment to dampen sound.
Generators
The initial site will have just 10 diesel generators, whereas the full buildout would include 56. These would be tested monthly during daytime hours and only run during testing and in emergencies.
There would be no underground storage of diesel fuel, and fuel tanks would be outfitted with leak detection, Clark said. Additionally, every generator would have diesel particulate filters intended to decrease harmful matter released into the air.
Clark noted that the cost of diesel fuel is high. Those costs mean that DC Blox is incentivized to run generators for as little time as possible, while meeting the federal diesel generator testing standard of 30 minutes per month.
A contaminated site
The site is the final undeveloped parcel in Lauth Group’s 150-acre industrial park. A Ford plant opened there in the 1950s and operated until 2011, leaving behind soil contamination that rendered it a brownfield unfit for housing and farmland.
Company leaders said that leaves industrial use as the main option. They said the data center is a less intrusive option compared with factories and warehouses that attract truck traffic and lower investments.
Local residents wondered whether stirring up soil would lower air quality or leave nearby residents in a cloud of contaminated dust. In response, DC Blox representatives said the land’s brownfield status means that a developer may not take the soil offsite or draw from groundwater sources. DC Blox has also committed to adding a two-foot layer of soil and vegetation to any areas of the site that are not covered by buildings or asphalt.
Long-term employment
About 35 people would be employed at the site after the buildout. Armistead said these positions would be trade jobs in areas such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning and would pay about $55 per hour with no college degree necessary.
Other commitments
DC Blox has already committed to some specific community benefit opportunities.
For example, the company will make an annual donation to the Parks Alliance of Indianapolis for at least five years to fund maintenance on the Pennsy Trail in Warren Township. Also along the Pennsy Trail at the northern end of the site, DC Blox has committed to working with AES Indiana to plant native wildflowers and grasses and control and clear invasive species.
Armistead said there will be other opportunities for the community to determine how these benefit investments are spent.
One attendee asked if the developer would consider using community investment funds to reopen the Ransburg YMCA, a beloved local institution that closed last month due to financial issues.
Armistead said the YMCA is part of “a conversation” regarding how the community benefits from the data center could be used, but did not give a definitive yes or no answer.
What is DC Blox?
The Atlanta-based data center developer was founded in 2014. It is funded through private equity firm Future Standard, which has $94 billion in assets under its management.
DC Blox currently has 10 data centers nationwide, mostly in the Southeast, and says on its website that a total of 23 are either operational or in development. It is a private company and does not publish revenue numbers. However, Armistead told attendees that the company is profitable.
The company’s CEO is Jeff Uphues. During a particularly tense discussion on the company’s private equity ownership Thursday evening, Uphues stood up to introduce himself to attendees and defend the company. Uphues said that he grew up in a small Iowa town and worked his first job as an electrician at Durham Electric Co. He said he and three other company leaders invested in DC Blox at the start, and it currently has 150 employees.
“We’re a small business in many ways because we depend upon investors for the capital that is required for this,” he said. He said company leaders care about the community, adding, “we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.”
“I know that you don’t trust us today. I know that, that’s OK,” Uphues said. “Trust is earned over a period of time. Every market that we have gone into, we have earned the trust of the community.”