As construction on Google’s data center in southeast Fort Wayne progresses, the conversation around it and its increasing needs has become bigger, with more people opposing the project.
Community Development Director Jonathan Leist talks about the potential benefits of the build and where, he feels, the conversation around it misses the mark.
What was the financing structure for the property? And did Google receive any tax incentives for picking it?
Sure. So we sold our portion of the property for a little less than $12 million, $11.4 (million) I believe, something like that. So that was over and above our last appraisal that we had of the property. So definitely market rate on the land sale.
And then on the tax side, we had what we called a taxpayer agreement. So in this case, very large investment, larger than probably anything we had seen at least in the last five years for sure. We knew we were up against some other locations, some other states, so we wanted to be competitive. And so rather than our traditional phase in which has a lower amount in the beginning of taxes paid and a higher amount abated, the company, they were comfortable, and we were comfortable with a 50% kind of across the board, which actually ends up being about the same amount as you would get on a 10 year.
Fifty-percent straight across the board for a 10-year period. But there was also a minimum taxpayer agreement as part of that. So even in like what we would consider this year 2025 is year one, where the county assessment of the building is a year behind, but they're required to pay $1 million throughout the 25-year period that began this year.
And I know that you have been continuing to meet with Google employees and contractors and so on your end, was there any concern when changes to wetland usage and these extra diesel generators came up?
We anticipated that they would need to apply for some wetland impacts. Again, that site had a lot of forested area, a lot of low areas. Any project that we put out there, we expected that there was going to be some kind of wetland permitting required. I know in Google's comments to us, they've let us know, hey, they tried to prioritize the larger wetland areas and keep those intact.
So the ones that I think, that were over five acres, they were able to preserve those. The smaller ones that they weren't able to keep intact, they've applied for the process they go through, and then, you know, they purchase credits and help construct new wetlands at another site.
It's been pretty heavily documented what some of the problems that these data center builds in other cities have been, and so how are you guys working as a city to make sure that those issues aren't coming here?
Before this ever got approved. We did a couple visits to another site in Ohio that had very similar build out same company, Google, in Columbus, Ohio. The biggest concern we were hearing from residents, they heard that the sound had a tremendous impact on other data centers and neighbors of other data centers. So we really, we really dug into that. We went and visited the site. I think what we saw and heard there was that the only sound really being emitted was construction. Like there was no unique data center sound that I think people in other locations had.
Where we landed was it seemed like there was a particular style of build and a particular location on the east coast where this sound was an issue, and it was a different company that was building those. And even they, I think, from what we were able to find pivoted from that particular style of construction because of that.
Are there any misconceptions that you've heard from the public?
For me, the water and the sound, which, again, I think were issues in some communities. But like off the bat, we can clarify just because of the source of the water and the design of the building, those are not issues we expect to see here at all in Fort Wayne.
For us, you know, we don't have control over the electric rates at all. All the communication we've had up to now is has been that at least our particular data center is going to pay its own way on the infrastructure side, and that those costs aren't going to be passed on to the general rate payer. We'll have to rely on AEP to fully, you know, get that information out there.
