The South Bend Common Council tonight will vote on a bill banning city staff from entering non-disclosure agreements.
The vote comes as a developer plans a new data center power generation facility for South Bend but won’t say where.
The ordinance bans employees in all three branches of government –- the council, the administration and the clerk’s office –- from entering into non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs about projects.
Council members Oliver Davis and Sherry Bolden-Simpson introduced the bill after learning that members of Mayor James Mueller’s team signed NDA’s with Amazon in 2023 regarding their data center.
WVPE reported over the weekend that a Miami-based firm, NextNRG, has bought a 33-acre site from Envision South Bend LLC for a data center power generation facility. Called the Lone Wolf Energy Center, it would be smaller than the hyperscale data centers Amazon and Microsoft are building locally.
Property records show Envision South Bend owns land around Lonewolf Drive, southwest of the Indiana Toll Road/U.S. 31 interchange. The site is already zoned industrial so there wouldn’t be any public approval process.
