Indiana official sees Amazon data center as key win for development strategy
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana’s top economic development official told News 8 on Thursday that a data center campus near South Bend will help other high-tech companies with recent jobs announcements.
The state government’s Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC) on Thursday announced Amazon Web Services will build a data center campus near New Carlisle in St. Joseph County, just west of South Bend.
The deal was valued at $11 billion, an amount that the IEDC says would bethe largest single capital investment in the state’s history.
Amazon and the IEDC say the data centers will create about 1,000 new jobs, though they did not specify how many of those jobs were construction jobs.
Indiana Secretary of Commerce David Rosenberg says the IEDC is focusing on building an entire business ecosystem for companies in the artificial intelligence field. He says the Amazon announcement would play into, among other things, SK hynix’s artificial intelligence chip manufacturing facility in West Lafayette. The Purdue president said the chip maker’s investment of $3.87 billion, announced April 3, was the largest ever in Indiana.
Indiana’s commerce secretary said, “We’ve been very focused (on) what are those industries 50 years from now that can help drive our state forward, and so we’ve been very aggressive in those markets, and the great thing about those is they have those high-wage careers.”
Rosenberg referred questions about the project’s timeline and worker breakdown to Amazon officials, who had not yet answered the queries by late Thursday afternoon.
Rosenberg says Amazon is looking to build two campuses, and the negotiations were very competitive. He says Indiana pulled it off because the IEDC negotiators brought all of the stakeholders to the table, including local governments and universities.
Indiana committed $98.3 million in tax credits plus sales tax exceptions for the certain capital investments over the next 50 years. Rosenberg says those credits would be assessed on the taxes Amazon pays and the company won’t get them unless it lives up to its investment promises.
Carol Rogers, co-director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University, says St. Joseph County was an excellent choice for a data center. She says data centers require lots of water and cool temperatures, and New Carlisle’s proximity to Lake Michigan means that area can provide both.
She says jobs at Amazon’s data centers often pay from the high $60,000 range to roughly $110,000 per year, so the jobs will be very attractive to the people who live in and around St. Joseph County.
Moreover, she says, data centers are in high demand and will remain so for years to come, so it’s still a growth industry.
“Maybe we’re all a little immune to saying ‘billions,’ but take my word for it, it is a very big deal,” she said.
Rogers says construction will take some time, so that means plenty of construction jobs. She says construction workers likely will need to rent homes or apartments, and will patronize local businesses.
Once the data centers are up and running, Rogers says, expect an influx of new workers who are both able and willing to pay for services ranging from hair salons to home repair.