New Carlisle Has a Massive Data Center

Amazon’s data center on the outskirts of New Carlisle, Indiana, is already one of the largest in the United States and is still expanding. The townspeople have so far absorbed this profound transformation of what had been 1,200 acres of farmland.

Then lawyers for an enterprise called Western Hospitality Partners showed up. Despite the company’s reassuring name, WHP is identified online as a developer that focuses on data centers. The lawyers said that WHP intended to purchase 1,300 acres of farmland on the other side of New Carlisle from Amazon’s data center to construct a large data center for a client whose identity was not disclosed.

In March, the bipartisan town and county councils voted to deny zoning approval for the project. But I’ve been told that the lawyers, in their “suits and gold watches,” can still come back and reapply on behalf of the seller. Holding out against a willing seller of the land, farmers who have been in the area for generations, will not be easy.

Robert Bryce, who publishes a widely read Substack on energy issues, reports that since January 1, 2026, he has tracked 275 bans, rejections, restrictions, or moratoriums on data centers across the country. Bryce compares the backlash to what he has seen in opposition to “Big Solar and Big Wind.”

“The simple truth,” he writes, is that people “all across the US and around the world are fighting data centers because these projects are not providing sufficient value to their communities.”

That is his conclusion, as an expert. But based on my experience in New Carlisle, this is not the full story. As I wrote last year, New Carlisle’s experience has been that Amazon has dealt with the community with sufficient care to minimize the disruption of a major industrial development by showing interest in the town’s welfare.

And this has continued. Amazon has provided funding for a STEM program at the local high school, and the company supports community events at Christmas and Hometown Days during the summer. A community relations representative from Amazon has been working with the town to ensure that a cooperative spirit is maintained.

In my conversations with town leaders, they have told me that they recognize that to some extent this relationship is a tradeoff. Given the county’s interest in economic development, the right approach, they say, is to make the best of the new reality.

I chose not to try to contact Western Hospitality Partners for its version of its intention to build a data center, because the issue seemed to be moot. After the rejection by St. Joseph County, where New Carlisle is located, the company pivoted to a site in South Bend, which was already zoned for industrialization, according to the South Bend Tribune.

What made the New Carlisle people so determined to block the plan was the tone of the approach. Whom were the lawyers actually representing? Town officials told me they didn’t know. They said the looming scale of the project clearly threatened New Carlisle’s environment, the town’s proud culture, and its living standards.

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Artificial Intelligence is a very big deal by all accounts, with trillions of dollars being invested. AI is definitely an innovation comparable to electricity, automobiles, aviation, and telephones more than a century ago, and to the internet in the last fifty years.

What remains to be demonstrated is what it means for the people of New Carlisle. This summer’s Hometown Days had its traditional features: the parade down the town’s main street with the high school band, cheerleaders, and floats; the food fair in the town’s park; and a Wiffle Ball competition that attracted competitors from a distance.

The vibe in this corner of the Midwest, northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan, seems remote from the political and economic freneticism elsewhere in the country, in Washington, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and as far away at the Strait of Hormuz.

Michigan’s Democratic senatorial primary was portrayed as a major contest between the progressives, represented by the narrow winner, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and the “establishment” candidate, Representative Haley Stevens. (Having watched the televised debate between the candidates, El-Sayed was more glamorous than Stevens, who tended to glower; that may have had something to do with the outcome.)

No doubt the United States has deep divisions along ideological lines, and media coverage of issues like the Iran war, support for Israel, the botched work on the Reflecting Pool, and the tirades coming from President Donald Trump are unavoidable.

But what I have particularly admired in the spirit of New Carlisle and the other small towns and cities in the region this summer are their time-honored summer routines and their determination to make the best of the inevitability of challenges and changes to their way of life.

So, for now, there will only be one big data center on the outskirts of New Carlisle, because the people who live there, through their elected representatives from both political parties, want to keep it that way. Grass roots democracy is still very much worth the effort of speaking out and casting your vote.

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