Indy Lines Up $56M in Tax Breaks for a 40-Job Data Center. Neighbors Asked for Moving Help and Got a No.

The Indianapolis Public Library's Martindale-Brightwood Branch on Sherman Drive, a short walk from the former Sherman Drive-In lot where Metrobloks plans its data center. Photo by Momoneymoproblemz via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Cierra Johnson brought two plain questions to Wednesday night's meeting at the Frederick Douglass Family Center. If a data center goes up near her Martindale-Brightwood home, would neighbors who want out get help relocating? And would any of the money land directly with residents or the small businesses nearby? Andrea Richter-Garry, who runs the city's economic development arm, answered no to both, Mirror Indy reported.

The developer on the other side of the table is in line for a lot more than a no. Indy Economic Development Inc. has negotiated nearly $56 million in tax breaks on property and equipment for Metrobloks, the Los Angeles company that wants to build on the vacant lot where the Sherman Drive-In Theater once stood, near 25th Street and Sherman Drive. A future tenant of the building could save up to $339 million more on new equipment purchases, according to both Mirror Indy and WRTV.

Johnson, who leads the neighborhood group One Voice, told Mirror Indy she has thought about moving. “As much as I love my other community members, I cannot sacrifice the health and safety of my family for any reason,” she said.

Forty jobs, fifteen years

What do taxpayers get back? The final resolution the Metropolitan Development Commission had on its Aug. 19 agenda, as posted by the public-records tracker SpyGov, lays out a 15-year enhanced abatement on personal property, meaning the equipment that fills a data center. It ties the break to 40 permanent jobs paying $46.14 an hour. The resolution puts total investment at $7.6 billion across up to two buildings and 332,000 square feet, with $406 million of that from Metrobloks and $7.2 billion from tenants. City staff estimated Indianapolis would still collect about $19.4 million in personal property taxes over the life of the break, and the commission kept the power to cut or cancel the abatement if the job and investment targets are missed.

Divide the roughly $56 million package by those 40 jobs and you get about $1.4 million in tax relief per permanent position, before the tenant's equipment savings are counted at all. Metrobloks says the project will create jobs and generate tax revenue, WRTV reported. For the past year, neighbors have answered that a project with few long-term jobs is a strange place to hand out breaks.

The mayor's office says it stays out. Its nonprofit did not.

Indy Economic Development is a nonprofit set up by the Hogsett administration to bring in and keep jobs. When residents went to court this spring, Mayor Joe Hogsett's office told Mirror Indy the administration does not get involved in or comment on zoning matters. That same nonprofit, Mirror Indy reported in May, had sent a letter to Metropolitan Development Commission members asking them to approve the project.

The community payment has moved with the size of the break, too. At the commission's April 1 meeting, Metrobloks CEO Ernest Popescu said money for neighborhood infrastructure could climb to $20 million depending on how large a tax abatement the company received, according to Mirror Indy. The figure on the table now is $22.5 million under the city's required inclusion plan: $4.5 million up front, then $2 million a year for nine years, for infrastructure, parks and community grants. Mirror Indy reported that nobody has said yet who will receive it.

The Rev. Denell Howard of Hovey Street Church of Christ put the residents' frustration in one line to Mirror Indy: “They are just telling us what they’re going to do. The community, from the beginning, has been saying no.” Democratic state Sen. La Keisha Jackson sounded the same note to WRTV: “It leads you to wonder who (is) making these decisions to move it forward.”

Nine appointees, not 25 councilors

That question has an answer. The Metropolitan Development Commission is a nine-member board whose members are appointed by the mayor and the City-County Council, WFYI has reported. Nobody on it faces voters for the seat. The commission approved the zoning for the nearly 14-acre site at 2505 N. Sherman Drive in April, and residents joined by the Hoosier Environmental Council filed for judicial review in Marion Superior Court on May 1, arguing the commission misapplied variance standards and that Metrobloks skipped adequate environmental, water, utility and traffic studies. The suit names Metrobloks, the commission and landowner Sherman Investments LLC, and asks a judge to block construction and throw out the zoning approval, WFYI reported.

Residents' worries go beyond money. The lot sits near homes, a branch library and one of the area's only grocery stores, and the neighborhood still remembers the soil cleanup left behind by the old American Lead plant. Down in Evansville, the City Council chose a different path this week, approving a 180-day pause on data-center permits while it studies zoning, 14 News reported, after we previewed that vote.

The commission's public hearing and vote on the Metrobloks abatement is set for 1 p.m. Oct. 21 in the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St. The drive-in's screen came down a long time ago. Whether the next thing on that lot gets fifteen years of tax relief will be decided by nine people nobody in Martindale-Brightwood elected.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.