Hundreds of people filled the W.G. Smith Auditorium during the Henry County Planning Commission meeting Thursday evening.
They wanted to hear how the planning commission voted about a planned technology park at the corner of Interstate 70 and State Road 109.
The planning commission agenda included the review and certification of an Outline Plan for a Planned Unit Development (PUD) at the site. The petitioners were GM Development Companies LLC and Surge Development LLC.
GM Development is based out of Springport. Surge Development is based out of Shelbyville.
If the PUD is approved and the farmland is rezoned, the northwest corner of the I-70/Ind. 109 interchange could eventually be the home of a data center, which would likely be used by an artificial intelligence (AI) or cloud-computing technology company.
At the end of the nearly two hour meeting, the planning commissioners voted 6-2 to table the decision until their November meeting. They hope to visit an existing data center before then to see firsthand how those facilities impact their neighbors and surrounding communities.
Planned Unit Development
Zoning Administrator Tom Green explained that Henry County has had rules on the books for a long time about creating a PUD, but this is the first request to put those rules to use.
Green said this is a three-step process, starting with the planning commission’s review and certification of the Henry County Technology Park PUD Outline Plan.
“There was a pre-design conference where we looked at their overall plan and discussed the process and steps needed to seek a PUD development,” Green said.
Thursday’s public hearing was for the planning commission to approve or disapprove the resulting outline plan. This approval or disapproval would then go to the Henry County Commissioners for final action. The county commissioners would have up to 90 days to take action on the planning commission’s recommendation.
The third phase of creating a PUD would be the approval of a formal development plan.
“We don’t know when that would be,” Green said. “They have up to 18 months after the county commissioners would take action on the recommendation.”
Green clarified that no permitting would be granted before the development plan was approved.
“The development plan has to follow the outline plan,” he said. “This hearing is not to approve or deny any particular type of development within the PUD area. And the permitted uses allowed in the technology park will be described in the outline plan they’ll present tonight. They can’t change what they’re doing in there once it’s approved.”
Green said a Planned Unit Development becomes a lawful ordinance once it goes through the approval process. The rules will then apply to any future owners or developers of that PUD area, he said.
Petitioners’ Presentation
Planning Commission President Marsha Gratner explained that GM Development and Surge Development would have 10 minutes to discuss their applications.
Following that presentation, the planning commission scheduled 30 minutes each for people speaking in favor of the PUD outline plan and people speaking against the plan. The applicants would then be given time to answer any follow-up questions from the planning commission.
Greg Martz, owner of GM Development, spoke on behalf of his company, as well has Surge Development and the Weimer family, which owns the 585 acres in question.
Martz said the site is perfect for technology development because it is right next to a state highway and an interstate and is also located near high-pressure natural gas pipelines. The plan is to build a natural gas power station on the site.
“Tonight is simply step one, and there are many, many steps remaining after this evening,” he said. “To be clear, we are not asking for approval of any of these tonight, as they are all future steps with their own vigorous permitting processes.”
“Also, to be clear, we are not asking for approval of a specific data center and company tonight,” Martz added. “We have not had a single conversation with a data center user, like Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. about this site at any time in this process.”
Martz said the goal Thursday was to approve an outline plan that includes restrictions for any development in the northwest corner of I-70 and Ind. 109.
“The reason we are not discussing the project with the company prior to achieving zoning is simple: We do not want the company to have any influence whatsoever over the zoning process,” Martz said. “We have all seen what happens when they do.”
He added, “We want the community – and not the company – to determine the parameters of the zoning.”
Martz and his business partner Chris King have hosted multiple community open houses and had “hundreds of conversations” to get feedback from the Knightstown and surrounding communities about this project. Coverage of the most recent open house is in this issue of The Courier-Times.
Proposed ‘guardrails’
Martz named four main restrictions or “guardrails” included in the PUD outline plan: water source, on-site power, noise mitigation and environmental considerations.
Martz said there will be “no on-site water wells” at the technology park. This has been the main topic over conversation over the last year, he said.
“Some data centers use a type of open cooling system that can use millions of gallons of water per day by sucking water directly out of the ground,” Martz said. “It is terrible, and we are vehemently against using this kind of cooling system.”
He said other cooling systems exist. One way to ensure future companies use those systems is to permanently forbid any on-site water wells and requiring them to get water through a local utility company.
Martz said electricity would be generated within the technology park, by way of the natural gas pipelines. This plan addresses the fact that data centers require “immense amounts of power” that can strain local power grids.
Martz hopes the technology park could eventually put excess electricity out into the power grid.
Addressing noise concerns, Martz said Henry County has “one of the best and strictest” ordinances he and King have seen.
“The submitted PUD requests no changes to the county’s existing noise ordinance,” he said. “And the future company will be required to strictly adhere to it.”
The property would also be surrounded by an 8-foot berm, which would also help reduce noise from impacting neighboring properties, Martz said.
Martz said environmental concerns did not come up as often in community conversations as water and power usage did, but “this is something that we are extremely passionate about.”
The developers plan includes intentionally and permanently leaving 25 percent of the property (about 150 acres) undeveloped, to be used as parks, natural areas, ponds and green space. The outline plan also includes 300-foot property line setback for all on-site buildings and a 120-foot wide buffer landscape of native plants around the perimeter.
“The strategies help preserve the rural character, but they also provide protection for wildlife,” he said.
“When you add all of these guardrails together, we believed that this will become the most restricted site in the entire county,” Martz said. “We are not aware of any other property in our county that comes anywhere close to having this combination of restrictions. But, again, we are making this request voluntarily because we believe it’s the right thing to do.”
Martz said this is the first time a technology park developer has started with this many restrictions, including the goal of making sure any future company on the site pays full property taxes and pays for any required utility upgrades, rather than passing those costs to other rate payers and tax payers.
“Our hope is that we can prove this model locally and that it becomes a nationwide precedent,” he said.
Martz and King understand that having a large number of restrictions and demands could make the site unattractive to future customers.
“If that happens, the property will simply remain agricultural use for the foreseeable future,” Martz said, “and at least we know we took a shot.”
Tabling the decision
The planning commission then heard an hour of public comment for and against the outline plan. Coverage of those portions of the meeting appear in this issue of The Courier-Times.
After hearing public comments and the petitioners’ responses, Planning Commissioner Dale Cole made the motion to put the PUD outline plan decision on hold until the board’s Nov. 20 meeting so they could gather more information. Jason Roberts seconded.
The vote to table the discussion was 6-2, with members Terry Matney and Sheldon Dynes voting against.
“I just felt like maybe we need to proceed, not put it off,” Dynes told The Courier-Times after the meeting. “We have a tendency to put things off. It’s better to just handle it. Because, really, we’re looking at the outline, not the plan... The detailed plans are the important stuff later. That’ll come later.”
Matney said many of the public comments were not about the outline plan that had been presented, rather they were about concerns for hypothetical projects.
“Every question they were asking was the right question. Legitimate questions,” he said. “But it didn’t really apply to what we voting on tonight, either.”
“We’re trying to prepare the land, make it as hospitable for the neighbors as possible,” Matney continued. “That’s what we should have been voting on.”
Matney said studies on air emissions and power infrastructure would be included in phase two of project, if it gets there.
“But for us, I don’t know that that was our responsibility,” he said.
The Henry County Planning Commission will meet again at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20. A location had not been announced as of press time.