A public question about a data center for Merrillville’s panhandle may be put to its voters in November if town administrators can finesse the question to fit within state law.
Councilman Shawn Pettit, D-6, told about 40 attendees during an informational meeting the Merrillville Town Council hosted at the Dean & Barbara White Community Center Tuesday evening that he’s approached the Lake County Elections and Registration Board about taking the question to the voters via referendum during the November general election. The town is currently considering two data center projects: one at Colorado Street at Harms Road, and one at 101st Avenue east of Deep River.
Wording the question as, “Do you want a data center, yes or no?” isn’t supported by state law, Pettit said Election Board Director Michelle Fajman explained, so he’s asked Merrillville Town Manager Michael Griffin to determine under what law the town can ask the question. But even if the town doesn’t get to put the question to its voting population, the council expects to vote on it by December because the first year of budget losses under Senate Enrolled Act 1 is coming fast.
“We need to get on board with this, because if we don’t, this council will have to implement an option income tax,” Pettit said. “Over in Hobart, (Mayor) Josh (Huddlestun) has already established a grant fund … and we can do the same types of things with development agreement.”
The data center the town brought forth at the meeting, Project WayPoint, is proposed by PowerHouse, “a subsidiary of AREP, a highly experienced, vertically integrated fund manager and developer and real estate owner/operator,” according to a slide in its presentation. It would be built at Colorado and Harms by in the neighborhood of Polycon and near the new fire station, the developer’s attorney Richard Anderson said.
There’s also a NIPSCO substation near the site to the east, with three power lines dedicated to it, Anderson said. The center would sit 500 feet off Harms Road and 1,700 feet off Colorado, while a smaller ancillary building would sit 2,000 off Clay Street, said Andrew Deneen, a civil engineer with contractor Kimley-Horn out of Chicago.
The data center itself, meanwhile, would comprise 10 approximately 330,000 square-foot buildings and would have detention ponds that flow toward the flood plain, Miguel Garcia, senior land-use planner with AREP, added.
A report the developer requested from NIPSCO said the utility would be able to handle the uptick in power, but it’s not guaranteeing it and AREP’s “still evaluating the feasibility,” Anderson said.
Town Council President Rick Bella, D-5, said that he understands the Hobart AWS project is expected to bring 2,000 jobs and will bring the city $48 million in the first year and $27 million per year after that. Since Project WayPoint is being built on spec, however, the project won’t happen until the developer can tell them who the customer is.
Councilwoman Shauna Haynes-Edwards, D-2, who came with questions from her constituents, asked why taxpayers would be on the hook for so much of the expense if the data centers are self-sustaining. Anderson said American Water, for example, would be paying for the improvements to the Merrillville Conservancy District.
People who live in cities where data centers are built generally don’t feel a difference, but people in a town would see the benefits because of improvements, added Steve Muenstermann, who sits on town’s data center steering committee.
“If it’s managed properly, it will be prosperous. We can change a decaying community,” he said.
Some residents, however, aren’t buying it. Jennifer Gross, who lives in the proposed area, said she feels like the people who’re providing the information have financial interest in the project.
“I’ve been told to look up the “Myths vs. Facts” page on the Northwest Indiana Forum’s page, but there are no facts. ‘This will not’ is not an answer for me,” Gross said. “And I think the town threatening a tax is a bullying tactic, because we have an emergent economic panic all the time. (Data centers) are a moral question, so bringing money into it is offensive to me.
“I’ve lived here for 25 years, and every time some developer brings up a pie-in-the-sky project, we get burned.”
The Town of Merrillville will host a second data center meeting for residents June 11.
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Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.