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The top-secret Razor5 project, slated for construction east of New Carlisle, is a high-tech company developing massive data centers across the United States, officials confirmed exclusively to the Tribune on Friday, but the company name is unknown. Didn’t make it clear.
The multibillion-dollar data center has the potential to create more than 1,000 jobs and will be built on approximately 1,000 acres.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Meta are building such data centers across the country, including in the Midwest. Of the three companies, AWS officials have reportedly been seen gathering information around St. Joseph County in recent months. But when asked if the company plans to build a data center in the area, spokeswoman Virginia Milazzo would not confirm or deny that information.
“At AWS, we have a practice of not commenting on rumors or speculation. … We constantly evaluate new locations based on customer demand,” she said in an email.
Allen County’s similarly top-secret project, Project Zodiac, calls for developing a data center over the next 10 years on 728 acres in the southeastern part of the county near New Haven. Additionally, AWS has reached an agreement to build multiple data centers in central Ohio, including the Columbus area, in 2023, totaling nearly $8 billion.
In St. Joseph County, economic development officials have been in talks with Razor5 since May about a potential multibillion-dollar project to be built near an EV battery factory being developed by General Motors with Samsung SDI. .
On Friday, the St. Joseph County Regional Planning Commission received a petition to change the zoning of a 640-acre parcel on the south side of Indiana No. 2 from agricultural to industrial. Additionally, we received the following requests from county economic development officials: Indiana Enterprise Center land.
Another big project: Another large industrial development called for at New Carlyle near GM/Samsung site
The parcel is bounded by Strawberry Road to the east, Gordon Road to the south, and the Navistar testing site to the west. This will be the largest piece of land ever used for a data center.
Final approval of both proposals rests with the St. Joseph County Council. If all goes well, the earliest that could happen is March, said Bill Chariol, the county’s executive director of economic development.
IEC real estate requires data centers and other businesses to develop their properties to higher standards than typical industrial sites, including landscaping, architecture, and even building location.
The data center project, dubbed “Razor5” for several months, also includes a small 280-acre parcel southwest of Larison Drive, north of Edison Road and an EV battery factory already under construction.
Charriol said the project could provide hundreds of good-paying jobs and result in an investment in excess of the $3.5 billion GM/Samsung has committed.
Such data centers typically contain servers, data storage drives, and other equipment used to power the growth of cloud computing, allowing businesses and institutions to access services hosted on the Internet. network to store, manage, and process data.
The project will likely be built in phases, with site work likely to begin later this year.
Charriol said the high-tech company was attracted to the area because of the amount of water and electricity needed for the GM/Samsung project and the battery factory. In addition to these factors and land availability, businesses also like the proximity of high-speed internet access through the right-of-way along the Indiana Toll Road.
“We are still in the early stages of this process,” Chariol said. “We are still conducting due diligence to ensure the site can meet electrical, water and other utility requirements.”
Chariol said that if a tech company chooses to build here, it will need employees with a somewhat different skill set than most employees at the GM/Samsung factory, and the county is looking at potential GM /Added that Samsung vendors have also expressed interest in locating nearby.
While some have expressed concerns about whether companies like GM and Samsung will have enough workers, County Commissioner Carl Buxmeyer and Challiol said companies should consider their workforce as part of their due diligence. He pointed out that he was doing it.
“It’s up to businesses to decide whether they have enough workforce to support their operations,” Baxmeyer said. “But I’m amazed at how quickly these projects are getting to us. I’ve never seen a community with more opportunity.”
The $3.5 billion GM/Samsung project is expected to be completed in December 2027 and will consist of 3 million square feet of manufacturing space in two main buildings, creating 1,700 new jobs. It is expected.
Email Tribune staff writer Ed Semmler at esemmler@sbtinfo.com.
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