(St. Joseph County, IN) - The biggest development project in Indiana history is now prime for a build-out following the approval of tax incentives this week.
On Tuesday three governing bodies in St. Joseph County granted Amazon two tax abatements on their $11 billion data center, which is already under construction east of New Carlisle. Amazon will save 50 percent of its real property taxes for 10 years. The company will also be exempt for 85 percent of its computer servers and equipment over the next 35 years.
Construction is already underway at locations north and south of SR 2. According to Economic Development Director Bill Schalliol, six out of seven building shells are going up along Edison Road. The shells are warehouse-sized structurers that will house Amazon’s computing systems. “Each data shell is about 216,000 square feet, so it’s just a little smaller than a full-size Walmart,” Schalliol said.
The current phase of development calls for seven data shells at the north location, with the potential to add two more. Nine data shells are planned to the south. According to Schalliol, a total of 22 shells could be constructed over next several years. He said four building shells near Edison will be done by the end of this year, with Amazon employees occupying them in the first quarter of 2025. Construction south of SR 2 will ramp up once utilities are installed next spring. Other buildings, such as security, office space, and warehousing, will also be constructed soon.
Schalliol says at least 400 employees will run the data center. Hundreds of workers are busy building the structures now.
According to Schalliol, this particular Amazon project will continue to grow as Artificial Intelligence technology takes off. “This facility is much different than a lot of their other data centers,” he said. “This is really geared toward AI and machine learning, so it’s going to be very technical and very analytic-heavy, as compared to just being a data center cloud building. So as they build that customer base and continue to grow it, they’ll just have to build more and more of it.”
