A data center worth $500 million has been approved for construction in Martindale Brightwood, a neighborhood located northeast of Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission yesterday approved a request submitted by data center developer Metrobloks to rezone an approximately 14-acre land parcel at 2505 North Sherman Drive in order to make way for a data center.

The property has been vacant since 1983 and used to be a former drive-in theater.

IND A1 will offer 72MW of capacity at buildout with 154,000 sq ft (14,307 sqm) of available whitespace, according to Metrobloks’ website.

Metrobloks has also stated that the data center will use a closed-loop cooling system.

Those opposed to the data center say that it will harm the environment, that there was corruption involved, and that it constitutes environmental racism.

Protect Martindale Brightwood, an anti-data center organization, has said that “data centers are the new redlining,” referring to a historical practice in the US where financial services were withheld from areas with high concentrations of racial minorities.

“Data centers are being pushed into Black legacy neighborhoods like Martindale Brightwood. Not because it’s right, but because decision-makers and predatory developers think we’ll accept the burden,” says one of Protect Martindale Brightwood’s Instagram posts.

Martindale-Brightwood is located in the northeastern part of Indianapolis, the state’s capital.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission just approved another, larger data center outside of Indianapolis in Decatur Township in mid-March.

Located southwest of the city, the colocation data center developed by Sabey Data Centers will span 130 acres and offer 250MW of capacity at completion.

Metrobloks is a data center developer and operator focused on AI-ready facilities at the metro Edge. The company's CEO, Ernest Popescu, was previously a VP of data center development at Iron Mountain and has also held roles at Meta and Amazon.