Amazon Web Services announced five months ago that it picked St. Joseph County for a new data center campus. Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony at the Century Center in downtown South Bend officially launched the project’s construction. Several dignitaries, including Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, attended the event. Indiana Congressman Rudy Yakym, a South Bend native, said a wide array of leaders made the project possible.
“Today’s groundbreaking ceremony is a testament to leaders coming together with a shared goal,” Yakym said, “making this area an even better place to live, to work, to do business, and raise a family.”
The groundbreaking marked the beginning of an $11 billion investment in Northern Indiana. The new data center was expected to create at least 1,000 jobs and represented the largest capital investment in the state’s history. Amazon allocated $7 million of its investment toward road construction around New Carlisle. Governor Holcomb emphasized the project’s importance to the community.
“When good, growing communities and states partner with good, growing industries and companies like AWS,” Holcomb said, “good things tend to happen.”
St. Joseph County was chosen for the new data center campus for a reason. Kevin Miller, Vice President of Global Data Centers at Amazon Web Services, said they look at a lot of factors when they are determining where to put up a data center.
“Obviously, the first thing we look at is available land,” Miller said. “But we really try to find a place that has good workforce development, because that is so essential, not just to start the data centers, but to operate them long term. St. Joseph County was a positive in all areas we look.”
Miller said construction of the campus will move quickly and he expects some of the sites will be operational within the next year.
