Eight years ago, real estate agent Samantha Alba moved into her Washington Township home to get closer to nature. Located near Crooked Creek, just south of West 79th Street, the area was a perfect mix of urban life with a rural feel.

“There are a ton of micro farms and urban growers here and beautiful parks that are in forested areas,” she said. “People moved here for that peace and quiet, to get into nature and have enough space to do what they want to do.”

But the serenity Alba and other residents now enjoy could soon be replaced with the constant hum of air conditioning units and diesel generators.

Her home is close to a wooded 53-acre property at 7701 Walnut Drive with a 1,000-foot-tall broadcast tower and several support buildings owned by American Tower Corporation. The Massachusetts-based company owns and operates wireless and broadcast communications real estate throughout the world.

The company is petitioning the Metropolitan Development Commission to approve a petition to rezone seven acres in the northeastern portion of its property. The change would allow the company to build a 4-megawatt data center that would be smaller than others recently proposed in Franklin and Decatur townships, and in the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood.

But Alba and other residents in both Washington and Pike Townships are concerned about the effects the data center, even a smaller one, would have on their health, the surrounding environment and their electric bills.

Dozens of residents concerned about the proposed data center attended a public meeting Wednesday, Nov. 19 at the Pike Township Government Building to learn about the proposal and what to do to defeat it.

Alba said she hopes residents’ voices will be loud enough to be heard by their elected officials.

“If this gets passed, it might be time to consider leaving,” she said. “We’re thinking about starting a family, and we’re living in a space that we see our children growing up. I don’t know that I want to be that close to a data center.”

Data center plans

In a statement to Mirror Indy, American Tower confirmed it is seeking to build a small data center, but would not give more information about it to Mirror Indy.

“To respect local procedures, we will not make public statements about the project until the official review process is complete. All details will be shared during the community engagement sessions established by the City of Indianapolis/Marion County,” the statement said, in part.

According to Pike Township Residents Association President Susan Blair, American Tower representatives will speak about the project at a meeting of the Pike Township Residents Association 7 p.m., Dec. 10 at the Pike Township Government Building, 5665 Lafayette Road.

According to documents submitted to the city, American Tower wants to build a single-story, 20,000-square foot unmanned data center 140 feet from Township Line Road and 235 feet from the north property line. If built, the center would be about a mile from the Ascension St. Vincent hospital at 2001 W. 86th St.

It would need about four megawatts of electricity, or enough to power between 2,000 and 4,000 homes. The company says AES Indiana has the capacity for its energy needs, so it won’t require the construction of additional electrical infrastructure, such as a new power plant. It will require about four to five backup diesel generators.

The company said it would need a “minimal” amount of water to cool the center, which it would receive from Citizens Energy Group via a water main located along Township Line Road. It would use a closed-loop cooling system that would recycle a cooling mixture.

The documents do not say what the cooling mixture would be, but data centers often use toxic ethylene glycol or the safer, but less effective, propylene glycol to cool the equipment.

Data center construction would also require the removal of several heritage trees, defined by the Department of Natural Resources as being “significant” due to its age, size, cultural or ecological value, unique shape, or species.

Residents like Luna Bond say getting rid of local trees will negatively affect their health.

“We’re going to see rising rates of asthma, we’re going to see five points of heart disease,” Bond said. “We’re going to see increased severity of both of these, and it’s going to impact our community for generations.”

Opposing the proposal

Alba said she and other residents have learned a lot about how to fight proposed data centers from other Indianapolis residents, such as those who are part of the Protect Martindale Brightwood Coalition.

“I am expecting that this data center will not go in,” she said. “I am hopeful that our voices will be loud enough that our local government will feel the pressure and say, ‘No,’” she said.

Pike Township Trustee Annette Johnson and board chair Claudette Peterson oppose the data center proposal.

“We oppose this initiative 110%,” Peterson said. “Building something like this a mile away from one of our major hospitals on the northwest side is insane to me.”

Peterson said the board would write a letter of opposition to bolster the case against the data center.

Mirror Indy reached out to District 1 Councilor Leroy Robinson, who represents the district where the data center could be built, for comment about the project, but he has not yet responded.

What’s next?

The rezoning petition is scheduled to be heard by the MDC hearing examiner 1 p.m. Dec. 11 at the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St.

Pike Township Residents Association president Susan Blair said her group is petitioning the hearing examiner to push the hearing to January 18, but it’s unclear whether that will happen.

Visit the Protect Pike Township Linktree for links to data center maps and zoning documents.

Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.

Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.bsky.social.

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