A data center proposed by developer DC Blox in eastern Indianapolis, has moved one step closer to being built after being recommended for planning approval.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission Hearing Examiner Judy Weerts Hall declared the project should be approved on June 11.

DC Blox is applying for a use variance, which is a zoning exception granted to developers looking to use a property for a purpose prohibited by existing zoning laws.

This means that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission will be responsible for making a final decision about the project, not the Indianapolis City-County Council. The next meeting of the Metropolitan Development Commission is on July 1.

The proposed data center would be composed of three data center buildings – the first will be around 80,000 sq ft (7,432 sqm), the second around 140,000 sq ft (13,006 sqm), and the third around 190,000 sq ft (17,651 sqm) – totaling 420,000 sq ft (39,019 sqm) on a 32-acre parcel within the Thunderbird Commerce Center at 305 Fintail Drive, next to the neighborhood of Irvington.

The company estimates that the campus will require between $2 and $2.2 billion in investment, and has said that it would be built in two phases beginning with the smaller facility, according to a website about the campus.

DC Blox has said that the campus will have a peak demand of approximately 80MW-100MW, and the company has also said that “it will pay for the infrastructure upgrades and energy production costs needed to serve the project.”

It has also posted a “statement of commitments” related to the data center, including: the implementation of a closed-loop system; limiting building heights; noise standards; a prohibition on the use of the facility for cryptocurrency mining; and more.

But opposition to the proposed campus has been fierce.

A petition against the campus has received more than 1,500 signatures at the time of writing, and an appeal has been filed against the hearing examiner’s recommendation.

The Thunderbird Commerce Center was formerly home to a Ford Visteon manufacturing site, which was closed in 2007 and demolished in 2017.

Indianapolis has approved several data centers as of late. In March, a $4bn data center project was approved for construction in Decatur Township, southwestern Indianapolis, and in April, a $500 million, 72MW data center was approved for construction in Martindale Brightwood, northeast Indianapolis.

DC Blox is based in the US and has facilities in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, and Georgia, and has cable landing stations in South Carolina and Florida.

The company has received criticism for its plans to build a 24-acre data center right next to the Nashville Zoo in Tennessee. Both the Zoo and country singer Brad Paisley have expressed their opposition to the facility, and the petition against the campus has received more than 430,000 signatures at the time of writing – with around 40,000 of those signatures being added in the past week.

The company says its footprint totals 470MW and 2.78 million sq ft (258,270 sqm) across 23 facilities.