Amazon data center

Republicans on the St. Joseph County Council are calling for a two-year data center moratorium, while Democrats and the business community say that would jeopardize local control on major land use projects and close the door to future economic growth.

St. Joseph County Council Republicans are asking Amazon to give back some property tax breaks but a leading Democrat accuses them of political posturing.

Four Republican St. Joseph County Council members are asking Amazon Web Services to voluntarily pay into a fund that would give homeowners property tax relief, despite the council granting the tech giant an abatement in August 2024.

Citizens Action Coalition Program Director Ben Inskeep says the violations, while not major, indicate a troubling pattern at Amazon's data center near New Carlisle, which is still growing.

Amazon on Wednesday invited the news media into its data center for the first time to talk about job creation, as many in the public worry about how the growing number of data centers will impact energy and the environment.

Amazon and New Prairie officials say the tech giant's school STEM labs will prepare students to work in their data centers and in a wide array of fields, some of which we don't even know about yet.

The new limits on low-frequency sounds that industrial operations can emit won't apply to Amazon's data center because its building permits have been issued but they will apply to the data center that Microsoft will soon start building in Granger.

St. Joseph County Council President Bryan Tanner says he sympathizes with people living north of the Toll Road who might want to complain about low-frequency sound but it will not be possible to accurately measure sound from the data center when the Toll Road makes so much noise itself.

Of four Indiana data centers studied, only property values close to Amazon's data center near New Carlisle increased more than values countywide.

After Microsoft announced it won't seek property tax breaks for its data centers, four St. Joseph County Council members have asked Amazon to renegotiate their $4 billion property tax abatement over 35 years.