Microsoft held a three-hour open house Tuesday night at South Bend’s Century Center to talk about the data center they’ll soon start building in Granger.
The company didn’t give a presentation but instead set up issue-specific information stations with Microsoft staff to interact with the public. Jonathan Nobel, Microsoft’s senior director of infrastructure and government affairs, described the purpose of the event.
“Well tonight’s community meeting is really about hearing from the community, hearing about their concerns, being able to answer questions, and also hearing about what they hope to achieve with this project,” Nobel said.
But Holly Rodriguez came away disappointed. She lives about two miles from the site and was wearing a sticker on her leg with a circle-slash that read “NO DATA CENTER.”
“So I think the frustration leaving here is all the questions we’ve asked, whether it was about surveys, how many people are going to be employed here, when I asked if they will be part-time employees or full-time employees, they couldn’t give me an answer to that," Rodriguez said. "It just seems like everything we asked and came here to find out was a whole lot of workaround with no answer.”
