(St. Joseph County, IN) – The largest development project in Indiana history is now nearing construction following the approval of tax incentives this week.

On Tuesday, three government agencies in St. Joseph County awarded Amazon two tax breaks for its $11 billion data center already under construction east of New Carlisle. Amazon will save 50 percent on its property taxes for 10 years. The company will also be exempt from taxes on 85 percent of its computer servers and equipment for the next 35 years.

Construction has already begun at sites north and south of SR 2. According to economic development director Bill Schalliol, six of seven data shells will be built along Edison Road. The shells are warehouse-sized buildings that will house Amazon’s computer systems. “Each data shell is about 20,000 square feet, just a little smaller than a full-size Walmart,” Schalliol said.

The current phase of development calls for seven data shells at the north site, with the possibility of adding two more. Nine data shells are planned for the south. Schalliol said a total of 22 shells could be built over the next few years. He said four building shells near Edison will be completed by the end of this year, and that Amazon employees will move into them in the first quarter of 2025. Construction south of SR 2 will accelerate once utilities are installed next spring. Other buildings, such as security, office and warehouse buildings, will also be constructed soon.

At least 400 employees will operate the data center, Schalliol says. Hundreds of workers are currently busy building the structures.

According to Schalliol, this particular Amazon project will continue to grow with the advent of artificial intelligence. “This facility is very different from a lot of other data centers,” he said. “It’s really focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, so it’s going to be very technical and very analytical, compared to a simple data center in the cloud. So as they build and continue to build that customer base, they’re just going to have to keep building more and more of them.”