The Fulton County Area Plan Commission voted on February 10 to recommend that Fulton County commissioners approve a one-year moratorium on new data center proposals, which could thwart a plan to develop a 300-acre campus in the town of Akron, Indiana.

The moratorium requires the approval of the Fulton County Commissioners before it can take effect.

Although no formal application for a data center has been filed yet, news about a potential 500MW data center backed by developer Decennial Group began to circulate in January.

Decennial Group then held a series of open house meetings about the facility in February, and co-founder David Pavlick spoke directly with local residents at the Area Plan Commission meeting yesterday.

Pavlick has previously stated that the end-user of the facility would be a hyperscale company, according to ABC.

But the commission’s recommendation is a testament to the speed with which local opposition to data centers can gather momentum.

A public Facebook group for local residents – which can be joined by anyone – called ‘No Data Centers, Fulton County’ has since amassed around 2,200 members since being created in mid-January.

Fulton County is located west of Fort Wayne in the northern portion of Indiana. It is not a data center hotspot.

Property and data center developer Decennial Group has an existing presence in Indiana – last June, it agreed to build a 450,000 sq ft (37,725 sqm), 180MW data center with AI cloud firm CoreWeave in the City of Hammond, located on Indiana’s northern border with Illinois.