A massive $11 billion Amazon Web Services data center officially broke ground in New Carlisle.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, U.S. Rep. Rudy Yakym, South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce officials and other dignitaries gathered at the Century Center in downtown South Bend for a groundbreaking ceremony Monday. The construction had already kicked off.
"This record-breaking project will bring over $11 billion in investment and hundreds of jobs to the South Bend area," Yakym said in a statement. "Thanks to leaders at all levels who came together to make this transformative project for our region a reality."
The data center, one of several to recently flock to Indiana, will employ around 1,000 workers in New Carlisle, just east of the LaPorte County line in St. Joseph County. It's likely to employ Northwest Indiana residents willing to make the commute like the nearby Cleveland-Cliffs finishing lines in New Carlisle.
“Indiana welcomes Amazon’s leadership and investment to create new economic opportunities for Hoosiers and their families,” said Holcomb. “I’m beyond excited to see AWS create careers and investment in Hoosiers, as well as working with local institutions and organizations to strengthen our state’s burgeoning tech sector that will make additional long-term positive impacts in our local communities.”
Amazon Web Services estimates that the project will add $4.7 billion to the state's gross domestic product and support an estimated 3,000 jobs.
“We appreciate the warm welcome to St. Joseph County and the state of Indiana,” said Kevin Miller, vice president, Global Data Centers at AWS. “The strong spirit of partnership we’ve seen from local and state officials, community colleges and community organizations inspired great confidence as we developed our plans in the region. We’re committed to investing long-term in Indiana to help accelerate local workforce development, deliver new education programs for people of all ages, improve local infrastructure, and make a positive impact on this community as a great place for Hoosiers to live, work and thrive.”
The $11 billion data center project is the largest capital investment in state history, surpassing the BP Whiting Refinery's $4.2 million modernization project that allowed it to process crude oil from Canada's oil sands region instead of the Texas Sweet Crude Oil it previously refined.
Seattle-based Amazon, which is mainly known for its e-commerce but which brings in a whopping $80 billion a year through its cloud computing Amazon Web Services subsidiary, plans to contribute $7 million a year to road improvements along State Road 2 near the data center site.
More than $15 billion in data centers are now planned in Indiana due to a surge in demand because of artificial intelligence, as well as greater data usage for streaming, records digitization, e-commerce and many other uses in an increasingly online society. Indiana has lured many of them because developer Tom Dakich got the state to pass what's been described as one of the most competitive tax policies nationally for data center development when he was looking to build the Digital Crossroads data center at the site of the former State Line Generating Plant in Hammond.
The Indiana Data Center Tax Incentive, which was sponsored by the Region lawmakers state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, state Rep. Carolyn Jackson, D-Hammond, and state Rep. Earl Harris, D-East Chicago, offers tax exemptions on energy and equipment for up to 50 years for new data centers built in the Hoosier State. That was was the longest exemption period in any state when it passed.
The St. Joseph County Council also approved a 50% real property tax abatement for 10 years on each data shell that will be built at the new Amazon Web Services data center campus in New Carlisle, St. Joseph County Director of Economic Development Bill Schalliol said. The abatement reduces the assessed valuation Amazon Web Services pays property taxes on from about $2.3 million a year per building shell to about $1.15 million a year.
It also gave Amazon an Enterprise Technology Exemption at 85% for 35 years.
"The AWS event today was a great opportunity to celebrate the project and the work that went into getting the project put together, and also a great opportunity to discuss the opportunity and impact that this project will have for our county, region, and state for the next generation," he said. "This project is very significant and will be a major catalyst for brining new economy to this region."
The state also is offering a number of incentives, including up to $18.3 million in headcount-based tax credits, up to $5 million in training grants, up to $55 million in Hoosier Business Investment tax credits and up to $20 million in redevelopment tax credits. Those incentives are all tied to making good on job creation and investment promises.
Construction has kicked off on four data shells at the site, Schalliol said. More will be built in the next few years.
Not far from the Amazon Data Center, Microsoft will invest $1 billion in a 245,000-square-foot data center in the Radius Industrial Park in LaPorte that is billed as the largest economic development project in the city's history.
Search engine giant Google plans to construct a $2 billion data center that will employ 200 workers in Fort Wayne in Northeast Indiana. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is planning an $800 million data center that will employ 100 workers in Jeffersonville, just across the Ohio River from Louisville in Southern Indiana.
Karis Critical, which also developed a data center in Dekalb, Illinois, has approached Merrillville about building a $900 million data center campus that would create hundreds of new jobs.
Dallas, Texas-based Provident Realty Advisors backed off a plan to develop a $1.3 billion data center at Brassie Golf Club in Chesterton after it met with public opposition, including concerns about the scope of the project, the height of the buildings, noise and other issues. The developer is now looking to build in Burns Harbor.
Local economic development officials said they have gotten several more inquiries about data center projects.
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