Indianapolis council approves data center for Martindale-Brightwood

The Indianapolis City-County Council has given its approval to a rezoning request for a proposed data center to be developed by Metrobloks in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood. This decision comes after months of strong opposition from local residents, particularly those in the historically Black community, who voiced concerns over potential increases in pollution, noise, water consumption, and strain on the power grid. These fears are compounded by the neighborhood's history of industrial contamination, which residents have spent years working to remediate. City-County Councilor Jesse Brown attempted to delay the vote, proposing to pull the rezoning request from the agenda to allow for an additional public hearing, but his motion failed. Metrobloks' plans involve constructing a data center complex on a 14-acre former drive-in theater site, with the company claiming its closed-loop cooling system would use significantly less water than other industrial facilities. Local utility AES Indiana would supply electricity through direct contracts, not from the residential grid. The project's approval occurred despite an incident where Councilor Ron Gibson, who supports the data center and represents the area, had his home shot with a note left behind saying "No Data Centers." No arrests have been made. Separately, Councilor Brown successfully introduced a non-binding special resolution urging the Metropolitan Development Commission to implement a temporary halt on approvals for high-impact data centers, reflecting ongoing concerns about data center expansion in the region.