Mall-O-Manor LLC Data Center, New Carlisle, Indiana

A petition to rezone about 1,057 acres of farmland northeast of New Carlisle, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, for a data center was denied 7 to 2 by the St. Joseph County Council on December 10, 2025, after a meeting that ran ten hours and ended after four in the morning. The land belongs to Mall-O-Manor LLC and Randall, Betty and Scott Szczypiorski; the prospective buyer, put by DCD at $13 billion for the project, listed an address on Broad Street in New York and was not otherwise named in county records. A conceptual plan called for fourteen buildings, each about the size of Notre Dame Stadium.

Nearly four dozen people spoke, three minutes each, most against it on environmental grounds; public comment ran from around 11:30 p.m. to just after 3 a.m. "[The turnout] had an influence on the vote tonight," resident Dan Caruso said afterward.

Only two council members backed the rezoning, Democrats Diana Hess and Mark Catanzarite; no Republican did, although county Republican chair Jackie Horvath and Republican commissioners' president Carl Baxmeyer had endorsed it. Republican council member Amy Drake said she was with the people of New Carlisle and that the opposition was overwhelming.

Council member Joe Thomas pointed to the Amazon data center already being built nearby: "So, let's just wait until we see that the dust settles, and see what happens." The case for the project rested on property tax revenue to offset state funding cuts, and was pressed with television advertising, door-to-door canvassing and targeted messaging.

The refusal was the third against a data center rezoning in the area: the county's Area Plan Commission and a county council committee had each recommended against this project, and in October 2025 the New Carlisle town council had filed a resolution opposing it after unanimous opposition from its own plan commission, with residents citing water and electricity use and the loss of farmland.

Tom Miles, who runs a business near the Amazon campus, said his worry was traffic: "All I could think of was the 300 residents down at Hamilton Grove ... a cement truck hits her, and pow, dead." South Bend Mayor James Mueller warned of the county's finances: "There's going to be a 4 a.m. conversation in a couple years when we don't have the money, and this council's going to have to choose, do you raise income taxes? Do you close fire stations?"

Drake said that before the vote, people claiming to be from child protective services had come to her home, a false report she said was made against her family. Mueller said in December 2025 that the developer could bring the proposal back to the council within six months; no new rezoning petition has been reported since.