‘Uniquely positioned’: New details on Kosciusko County data center emerge
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New details are emerging about a rezoning request in Kosciusko County that’s sparked strong feelings in the community as questions swirl.
Though the approximately 550 acres of land northeast of Leesburg haven’t yet been rezoned for industrial use, Inside INdiana Business has obtained more details about what Kosciusko County officials will be asked to approve in the coming months.
In short, Prologis—the world’s largest industrial property company—is eyeing the rural county for a possible data center development that it will lease to a separate end user.
Like other data center developers who have flocked to the Hoosier state in recent years, Prologis Senior Vice President of Data Centers JC Witt is impressed by Kosciusko County’s plentiful resources and Indiana’s pro-business environment.
“The difficult and finite resource in data centers is power,” Witt said. “This location is uniquely positioned with infrastructure both on a capacity perspective and a transmission perspective to be able to house scalable power onsite.”
New information about the project comes as Kosciusko County officials weigh a rezoning request that would set the development in motion.
Prologis’ plan
While groundbreaking on any project is a long way off, Witt shared some of what Prologis has in mind in Kosciusko County.
The San Francisco-based real estate developer has grown primarily through building commercial warehouses, which Prologis leases to other companies. Now Prologis is pivoting to constructing and leasing data centers, which are in high demand and more profitable. Witt said Prologis has been building data centers since the late 1990s, but the company recently committed close to $8 billion to the new strategy.
If the land near the town of Leesburg is rezoned, the company would look to use almost all of the nearly 550-acre site for 10 data center buildings. The site starts near the intersection of County Road 300 North and County Road 700 West and works northwest.
Water and electrical usage have been primary concerns for some community members, but Witt said the center as envisioned would be a closed-loop water system using about 40,000 gallons per day in total.
By comparison St. Joseph County officials last year set a cap of 24 million gallons a day that Amazon and Microsoft can draw from the Kankakee Aquifer for their data centers in the area.
“It’s an agriculture community…and we we can appreciate that, and we want to be a part of the community. So we’re not here to cause residual harm to the users around us,” Witt said, adding the site is not near any municipal water systems, making it infeasible to draw larger amount of water to the data center.
Prologis does not have a total cost estimate this early in the process, but it estimates paying more than $355 million in local taxes over the first 20 years of the data center’s life. Witt estimates Prologis will contract close to 1,750 construction jobs and whichever end user operates the center will hire around 300 full-time positions.
Prologis’ communications director, Mattie Sorrentino, said the company has emphasized the substantial tax revenue increase and the company’s reliable history of partnerships in its early discussions with Kosciusko County officials.
Sorrentino added Prologis has approached Kosciusko REMC, the local electrical co-op, and they have no objections.
None of the county’s three commissioners have responded to messages from Inside INdiana Business about the potential data center project. The commissioners will have the final say on whether the land is rezoned and any development deals the project entails.
But first, the county’s Area Plan Commission will meet on April 2 to give a recommendation on the rezoning request.