Amended Proposal 238 would freeze new approvals in Marion County until the end of 2027; Mayor Hogsett backs the pause.
The push to pause new data centers in Marion County cleared its first hurdle Monday night, as a City-County Council committee advanced an amended zoning ordinance — now carrying a moratorium on new approvals — to the full council with a do-pass recommendation.
The moratorium was added by Council President Maggie Lewis, who amended Proposal No. 238, 2026, to bar the permitting or allowance of any data center within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Development Commission until no later than Dec. 31, 2027. The stated purpose is to give Department of Metropolitan Development staff time to convene a committee of experts and residents and draft permanent rules covering campus size, building height, noise, subsurface and environmental testing, generator testing and electronic-waste disposal.
Mayor Joe Hogsett endorsed the pause earlier in the evening. In a statement, the mayor praised the department’s work on the underlying package and said the added time was warranted. “I support the proposed data center moratorium,” Hogsett said, adding that the city would engage neighbors, experts and stakeholders in the coming months.
The moratorium rides atop the larger proposal Lewis amended — one that would create a new special zoning class for data centers, designated SU-47, setting Marion County’s first standards for where the facilities may locate and how they must operate. The Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 on July 1 to recommend the district, rejecting louder calls for an outright halt.
Under the SU-47 standards, a data center’s primary building would have to sit at least 400 feet from the property line of a protected district, and mechanical equipment would have to be screened behind walls, berms and evergreen buffers. Applicants would file water management, noise study and mitigation and electrical-capacity plans, submit a decommissioning plan, provide notarized annual reports to the commission, and maintain a public dashboard tracking monthly power and water use.
The pause would not reach facilities already running. The amendment grandfathers existing and previously approved data-center uses, leaving them under their current base zoning. Two new data centers have already been approved in Indianapolis this year — a $500 million Metrobloks complex on a near-northeast side site and a Sabey Data Centers campus in Decatur Township.
The council has flirted with a moratorium before without committing. In May, it unanimously approved a special resolution asking the development commission to temporarily stop approving projects; the commission doesn’t have to abide by the request and kept acting. Former Council President Vop Osili, a Democratic candidate in the 2027 mayor’s race, has argued the city should regulate the facilities rather than ban them. “We are not a city that will be banning something like infrastructure,” Osili said earlier this year.
Opponents say the zoning rules still do too little. Ben Inskeep, program director of the Citizens Action Coalition, has argued the standards mainly meet the needs of the data center companies while leaving neighbors to absorb noise, water draw and higher energy costs. Constituents packed the commission’s July 1 meeting demanding a pause, and Democrats Jesse Brown and Crista Wells had pushed the idea for months without majority support.
The debate reaches well beyond Marion County. In Boone County, where Meta just built a $10 billion data center, commissioners are weighing a moratorium of their own.
With the amendment through committee, Lewis carrying it and Hogsett behind it, the remaining fight is less about whether to slow down than about what the permanent rules will say. Final action rests with the full council. To take effect, the ordinance must comply with Indiana Code § 36-3-4-14.
