Project dossier · Decatur Township (Indianapolis), Indiana

Sabey Decatur Township Approved

Two-building, 900,000+ sq ft, $4B campus near Camby Rd/Kentucky Ave. Approved by Metropolitan Development Commission in March 2026 via industrial-zoning adjustment; ~90 residents protested. Residents later sued; case helped drive Indianapolis's data-center moratorium push.

Key facts

Operator: Sabey Data Centers
Size: 250 MW
Acres: 130
Location: Decatur Township (Indianapolis), Indiana
Stage today: Approved

Source

What to do next

Next step: Approved — pivot from stopping it to a binding CBA: enforceable caps on noise, water and cost, plus a community benefit.

Build an action pack for this project →

What has happened so far (12 events)

2025-12-18announcement
Seattle-based Sabey Data Centers sought city approval for a roughly 130-acre, two-building data center campus on industrially-zoned land near Camby Road and Kentucky Avenue in Decatur Township, telling residents the project could generate more than $20M/year in property tax revenue at full buildout. · source
2025-12-18public-comment
Residents packed a Decatur Township Civic Council meeting at Decatur Central High School to question Sabey CEO John Sabey about the proposed data center; no speaker during public comment supported the project. · source
2026-01-29hearing
The Metropolitan Development Commission's hearing examiner held a petition hearing on Sabey's request for a variance of use to allow the data center campus on industrially-zoned land in Decatur Township. · source
2026-02-26hearing
The MDC hearing examiner recommended approval of Sabey's 130-acre Decatur Township data center proposal, advancing it to the full commission despite community opposition. · source
2026-02-26protest
About 90 Decatur Township residents demonstrated outside the City-County Building against the Sabey data center, citing noise, energy demand, water use, and property-value concerns; 1,400+ had signed an opposition petition vs. 24 supporters. · source
2026-03-18vote
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission voted to approve Sabey's variance-of-use request for a $4B, two-building, 900,000+ sq ft, ~250MW data center campus on 130 acres, making it Indianapolis's first hyperscale data center. · source
2026-04-17lawsuit
The Decatur Township Civic Council and more than half a dozen residents filed a petition for judicial review in Marion County Superior Court to overturn the MDC's approval, arguing the variance violated state law and due-process rights and amounted to a 'disguised rezoning.' · source
2026-04-20coverage
Coverage confirmed Decatur Township residents sued to block the $4B Sabey data center, citing noise, energy demand, water use, lack of permanent jobs, and property-value impacts. · source
2026-06-15filing
Attorneys for Sabey and the MDC filed a motion to dismiss the residents' judicial-review petition, arguing the citizens' petition failed to meet statutory requirements. · source
2026-07-10coverage
Council President Maggie A. Lewis announced she would seek a citywide data-center moratorium, citing the Sabey fight among the drivers of the push. · source
2026-08-10moratorium
Indianapolis City-County Council voted 23-1 to advance a moratorium pausing approval of new data centers in Marion County through 2028, partly driven by the Sabey fight; the measure exempts the three already-approved projects including Sabey's. · source
2026-08-19moratorium
The Metropolitan Development Commission voted 6-0 to give final approval to the citywide data-center moratorium (through Dec. 31, 2027); Sabey's Decatur Township campus was one of three already-approved projects explicitly exempted under state law. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

Indiana IDEM — Office of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
IDEM Virtual File CabinetSearchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Search Decatur Township (Indianapolis) planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
Search Decatur Township (Indianapolis) property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site.
EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

Indianapolis (Marion County) community briefing — Enactedexpires 2027-12-31
Indiana briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Other tracked projects in Indiana

AWS Northern Indiana expansion (New Carlisle) — New Carlisle (St. Joseph County) Operating
Abei Energy data center proposal (rezoning request) — Starke County Blocked by ban
Anthropic-Amazon New Carlisle — New Carlisle Operating
Cloverdale Solar Farm (EnergyRe) — Putnam County Withdrawn
DC Blox Warren Township (Thunderbird Commerce Center) — Warren Township (Indianapolis) / Irvington Approved

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Sabey Decatur Township”, aigridwatch.com/projects/sabey-decatur-township-in, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).