Randy Poynter has lived in a house in Decatur Township near farmland for the past 30 years. He moved to the home from the southside of downtown to get away from pollution generated from industrial developments near Tibbs Street and Kentucky Avenue, including a quarry he believes was causing him to have bronchitis.
But now, the longtime southsider fears his quality of life will be disrupted by a 1.1 million-square-foot data center near Camby, a neighborhood on the southwest side of Indianapolis.
“I’m concerned where our community is heading to,” Poynter said. “It just seems like, hate to say it, Camby has been known as the bastard child of Marion County.”
For roughly five months, township residents have been fighting an uphill battle against Sabey Data Centers, a Seattle-based company that plans to build its biggest facility yet near the intersection of Camby Road and Kentucky Avenue. Community members fear a data center would bring water contamination, noise pollution and hurt property values, making it harder for homeowners to protect their investment.
“I don't mind development as far as business, actual businesses, where the environment is not going to be infected,” Poynter said. “But I just don't want that in my backyard.”
After losing their effort to prevent zoning changes that will allow the billion-dollar data center company from moving next door, residents say they are planning to take the fight to the courts. They contend some of the studies Sabey presented to the zoning board failed to prove the project wouldn’t have a negative impact on neighbors.
“There's no way that the petitioners proved their findings of fact,” said Pat Andrews, the land use chair for the Decatur Township Civic Council. “Those variances should never have been approved, they don't meet standards set by state law and we will vigorously seek justice.”
The backstory
Sabey was given the green light to build the city’s first hyperscale data center at a zoning hearing March 18. The Metropolitan Development Commission approved two variances, or zoning changes, that passed 7-1 and 6-2. They allow Sabey to use the property for a purpose not listed in zoning code and alter the site plan, including landscaping and infrastructure changes.
To receive a variance, a developer must prove to the Metropolitan Development Commission that the health, safety, welfare and real estate values of a community won’t be negatively impacted by a zoning change that allows for a different type of development. Sabey representatives submitted studies to support their case.
Mindy Westrick Brown is an attorney for the national legal and consulting firm, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, and the petitioner for Sabey’s proposal in Decatur Township. During the hearing, she insisted residents’ homes won’t endure substantially negative impacts.
“This appraiser visited the site, the area, and reviewed the site plan and the specific commitments. His findings and analysis show the values of the residential properties surrounding the project will not be affected in a substantially adverse manner,” Brown said March 18.
Sabey’s evidence
Brown also pointed to other studies that found data centers didn’t hurt nearby residential property values.
Terry Clower, is a George Mason University public policy researcher who analyzed data centers in Northern Virginia, often referred to as the data center capital of the world. He said, looking solely at real estate data, home values were higher near data centers in Northern Virginia.
“We failed to demonstrate statistically that there was any kind of, on average, negative effect of being in close proximity to a data center on the sales price of that home,” Clower told Mirror Indy.
But, the study had limitations. Clower said the data centers in the study ranged in size and the research only looked at the real estate market for a single year. Plus, he said the area in the study has a tight housing market where there aren’t a lot of homes for sale, so the data isn’t applicable to all cities.
“If somebody wanted to take our findings and try to generalize it elsewhere, in other words, to say, apply it to a different market,” Clower said, “I would say do so with caution.”
Sabey also presented a report showing that data centers in other parts of Indiana didn’t negatively impact property values, according to the study conducted by Integra Realty Resources.
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“The analysis fails to demonstrate statistical evidence that proximity to a data center negatively impacts housing values,” the report states. “This suggests that any negative externalities associated with data centers, such as noise, do not have a systemic effect on housing values."
That study, covering 2021-2026, looked at property values for 80 homes near data centers in St. Joseph County, LaPorte County, Clark County and Allen County. When combining the data for all four counties, it found home values for the period grew 42% for homes within 1.5 miles of data centers, compared to 41% in the local markets. But a deeper look shows homes near data centers gained less value than the local market average in three of the four sites examined.
Additionally, the data included home values years before a data center was announced. At the time the report was published in January 2026, only two of the data centers were partially complete and operating, one was under construction and one was in the planning stages but nearing construction.
The author of the study was unavailable for an interview with Mirror Indy before this story was published.
Ashley Hooley is an organizer with Protect Decatur Township, a grassroots neighborhood organization against the data center. Hooley and her partner purchased what they believed would be their forever home and moved to the south side about three years ago because she wanted to be surrounded by nature, not big business.
“Sabey has never built a data center this big,” Hooley said. “So how do they know that our property values won't be diminished from this when what we hear over and over again is no one wants to live by one of these.”
Next steps
Now, Protect Decatur Township and the Decatur Township Civic Council are preparing to file a judicial review. They hope to prove that the Metropolitan Development Commission wrongfully approved Sabey’s zoning petition, according to Pat Andrews, who spoke on behalf of residents during a March 18 zoning hearing.
The community must raise $2,000 for legal fees in order to file the judicial review by April 17, 30 days after the hearing, as outlined in city zoning procedures. Residents can also donate online.
This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
