Thunderbird Commerce Center Project data center, Indianapolis, Indiana

DC Blox, a data center developer from Georgia, won approval from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission on July 15, 2026 for a data center campus at 305 Fintail Drive in the Thunderbird Commerce Center, the old Ford plant site near Irvington on the east side of Indianapolis, in Marion County. The approved plan, worth $2 billion, is smaller than the one first filed: a one story, 70,000 square foot building due in two years and a two story, 250,000 square foot building in five.

The Ford Visteon plant opened on the site in 1957, made car parts until 2007 and was demolished in 2017, and Lauth Group and Covington Group bought the land in 2021 for an industrial park.

DC Blox filed in April 2026 for three buildings of 80,000, 140,000 and 190,000 square feet, and Bill Thomson, its vice president of marketing, described the cooling: "Rather than continuously pulling from utility water, we'll fill up our water system one time from the utility, and then we continue to recirculate the water within the system."

The land is zoned heavy industrial but Indianapolis has no zoning class for data centers, so the company asked for a variance of use, which the Metropolitan Development Commission decides and the City-County Council cannot call down.

At a Warren Township meeting on May 21, 2026 some residents held signs reading "Block DC Blox," and Julie Watson said "these meetings happen, and then regardless of how the residents feel, the data center goes in anyway." The company's David Armistead answered: "Not all data center companies are the same, and not all data centers are the same." On June 11, 2026 the commission's hearing examiner, Judy Weerts Hall, recommended approval.

Residents shouted "Shame on you"; Dawn Briggs said "promises are not the same as proven facts, and assurances are not the same as enforceable commitments"; and Councilor Andy Nielsen cited his own survey in which 83 percent of respondents opposed the campus, while Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, whose district shares the site, held off.

DC Blox then published 20 commitments: to pay all utility costs and enroll in AES's green power program, use closed loop cooling, draw no groundwater, test generators only outside school hours, and give at least $20,000 a year for five years to the Pennsy Trail. Mikey Hess, a lifelong east sider, said: "I just don't trust it at all."

On July 9, 2026 the company cut the plan from three buildings to two, from 56 diesel generators to 31, and cut power demand from about 80 megawatts by 28 megawatts, to about 52 megawatts, moving the buildings toward the middle of the park, away from the trail and Irvington Community Elementary School.

The school, with about 300 students, is 850 feet from the site according to a later lawsuit, and the approval conditions require vapor mitigation, a two foot soil barrier on open ground, and a sound study showing no more than 65 decibels at the campus edge. Rachel Maldonado, the charter network's chief executive, visited a DC Blox center in Atlanta and heard a generator from 700 feet away, and said: "We're only getting a snapshot."

The city's moratorium on new data centers, passed by the development commission 6 to 0 on August 19, 2026 and running through 2027, does not reach this already-approved campus, and DC Blox is also pursuing tax abatements.

The commission approved the campus 6 to 1 a week after the cuts. Heather Rodriguez, who chairs the Irvington Community Schools board, told it: "What they are really asking for, a permanent change to what this land may be used for, next to an elementary school, is a rezoning dressed up as a variance."

On August 14, 2026 two neighbors, Irvington Community Schools and Eastside Community Action, filed for judicial review in Marion Superior Court 5 and asked for construction to be halted while it is heard. Megan Lapa, a plaintiff who lives near the site, said the objections raised on July 15 were "disregarded so pretty carelessly."