La PORTE — A new data center will be constructed in the Thomas Rose Industrial Park in La Porte.
On Tuesday, the La Porte Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously approved a variance that will allow five new industrial buildings to exceed the maximum building height on their parcels – which is limited to 45 feet on light industrial ones and 60 feet on heavy industrial ones – to 65 feet.
While the design and finer details of the project are still underway – including how the utilities of the site will be handled – Valparaiso attorney Todd Leeth, on behalf of the two developers of La Porte One LLC, asked for a change in the city’s set development standards for height to allow the incoming data center to be a two-story building.
Set on, according to Leeth, about 110 acres, the two parcels of land the data center will be constructed on are zoned differently. While one parcel is zoned for light industrial (M1) – which comes with a height standard of 45 feet – the second parcel is zoned for heavy industrial (M2) – which comes with a height standard of 60 feet.
The requested increase in height – 20 extra feet for the light industrial parcel, 5 feet for the heavy industrial parcel – is to help, Leeth said, “address the generation of heat” data centers are known to create.
“ ... the 65-feet building is only two stories, and what that provides for is the ability for the design to air cool the generation the servers within those buildings and the taller structures are needed for that to allow for the movement of air,” Leeth explained.
If the board were to not accept the variances, Leeth said the developer would then be forced to construct a one-story data center, and, in turn, locate additional parcels elsewhere to build a second data center.
To accommodate the increase in height, Leeth said the developers are planning larger setbacks than what the city code enforces. While a 30-foot setback is required for the light industrial zoned land, the current data center concept plan shows a setback of 370-feet on the farmland side, 250-feet on the west side, and 275-feet on the south side.
As for the data center’s closest neighbor, Gerald Swarzman’s five-acre property, Leeth said the concept plan currently calls for a 400-foot setback, which will include “buffering, landscaping and a detention pond.”
“That’s approximately 13 times the code setback, so my suggestion to you is that the further back that building goes, the more in scale it appears. And so, we believe that our 20-foot variance for the M1, if you set it back 13 times or 400 feet over a football field, including the endzones, it brings it more to scale,” Leeth said.
Despite the increased setbacks, Swarzman said he would still rather not be neighboring a data center and recommended the board consider the future of the area’s wildlife.
“I bought my property ... in August 2020 after several visits to the area. Frankly, I was overwhelmed by the natural beauty of the property, the presence of wildlife, and the apparent respect that the residents of the area had for the surrounding land,” Swarzman said.
“I know that there are people that look at this proposed development as progress. They see jobs and more tax revenue, but all this comes at a great cost. I look at the proposed development with sadness because it will bring the ugliness of the large industrial buildings and warehouses to this adjacent land. These developments create ugly scars on the land and replace La Porte’s natural beauty with concrete and steel,” he added.
Additionally, fellow neighbor William Pearce questioned how the construction of a data center will affect the surrounding area’s property values.
Due to the “light” traffic data centers typically have, CR-200N will act as the only access point to reach the data center.
“We don’t have shift change with hundreds of employees that you would see potentially on 110 acres. There are employees, [but] we don’t know how many employees, [as] that can range from 15 to 40 employees per building. It depends on the tenant and how they choose to man and staff their data center,” Leeth said.
The selection of the Thomas Rose Industrial Park being the site of the new data center, or as La Porte Economic Advancement Partnership Executive Director Bert Cook called it “Project Cardinal,” comes after almost a year of discussions between the city and developers.
“So, the Thomas Rose Industrial Park is one of the areas of the city that I am most proud of. I’ve been here for almost 20 years and that industrial park has built out significantly in that time,” Cook said.
“We have some of our largest employers in that area, and I think the Thomas Rose Industrial Park by the vast majority of people’s opinion would be the exact right location we would want to develop such as this,” he added.
Additionally, when the industrial park was expanded in 2015, Cook said the city planned and “did a wonderful job of readying this area for future development,” which includes better utility infrastructure.
This increase in height variance is nothing new for the Thomas Rose Industrial Park, as, according to both Leeth and Cook, similar variances have been approved for neighboring industrial buildings, with some reaching heights of 74-feet.
While the data center concept plan is still in its infancy, Leeth said the developers will be working closely with the city’s departments – engineering, water, wastewater – to hammer out the necessary details before moving forward, which includes utility usage.
But regardless, La Porte Mayor Tom Dermody, on behalf of his administration, said they are “supportive of this change.”
“There’ll be plenty of opportunities to talk about electricity, water and about this project by itself,” Dermody said.
“Your only vote tonight is to review the height of the project – not whether it’s a good, bad, [or] indifferent project, and I would ask for your support,” he added.
© Copyright 2026 LPHeraldDispatch.com