For six months in 2025, a 468-acre stretch of farmland in Franklin Township — near South Post Road, East Troy Avenue, Davis Road, and Vandergriff Road on Indianapolis's far southside — was the center of one of the loudest land-use fights in recent Marion County memory. A mystery entity called Deep Meadow Ventures LLC filed to rezone the site in March 2025 for a project code-named "Project Flo." In July, documents confirmed what many suspected: the developer was Google. The Metropolitan Development Commission approved the rezoning 8-1 in August. Then, on September 22, 2025, with hundreds of residents packed into City-County Council chambers and a denial vote looming, Google withdrew the application.
The project is gone for now, but the questions it raised are not — because the tax structure that made it attractive is still on the books, more data-center proposals are working through Indiana's pipeline, and the fiscal math behind these deals affects every other property owner in the taxing districts where they land.
What Actually Happened in Franklin Township
The timeline, as reported by Mirror Indy, WTHR, IBJ, and Data Center Dynamics:
- March 2025 — Deep Meadow Ventures LLC petitions to rezone roughly 467-468 acres in Franklin Township for a data center campus.
- June 2025 — Mirror Indy reports on the proposal and the state and local tax breaks such projects can access; residents raise concerns.
- July 2025 — Google is confirmed as the company behind the project.
- August 2025 — The Metropolitan Development Commission approves the rezoning 8-1; the petition heads to the full City-County Council.
- September 22, 2025 — Google withdraws the rezoning application before the council vote, citing disappointment the project would not proceed. Opponents had cited traffic, farmland loss, water and power strain, and limited job creation.
Opposition organizers noted the petition could be refiled, so the site — and the southside generally — remains a live candidate for future proposals.
Sales Tax Breaks vs. Property Tax Breaks: Get the Distinction Right
Coverage of data-center incentives often blurs together several very different mechanisms. They matter differently to you as a Marion County property owner, so it is worth being precise.
| Tax break | What it covers | Who grants it | Whose revenue it reduces |
|---|---|---|---|
| State sales/use tax exemption (IC 6-2.5-15) | Purchases of qualifying data-center equipment and energy | Indiana Economic Development Corporation | The state's sales tax collections |
| Personal property tax exemption | Enterprise IT equipment (servers, etc.) for owners investing at least $25 million | Local government (county option) | Local property tax base |
| Real property tax abatement | The buildings and land improvements themselves | Local government (e.g., City-County Council) | Local property tax base, phased over the abatement term |
The headline-grabbing break is the first one. Per the IEDC, Indiana's data-center statute exempts qualifying equipment and energy purchases from sales and use tax for up to 25 years — and for projects investing more than $750 million, the IEDC may award an exemption running up to 50 years. Because servers and networking gear are replaced every few years, that exemption compounds across decades of repeat purchases.
That break costs the state, not your township's tax base directly. The second and third rows are where the local property tax story lives — and both are choices made by local officials, not automatic entitlements.
The Statewide Numbers
WFYI reported in June 2025 that Indiana's data-center sales tax exemption had already been awarded at significant scale, with dozens more proposals in the queue and Amazon, Google, and Microsoft among the tech giants expected to qualify for breaks.
State fiscal analysts flagged $2.2 billion to $13.2 billion in equipment purchases that could escape taxation, which at Indiana's 7% sales tax rate works out to roughly $150 million to $900 million in forgone revenue. The state's Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis was candid about the uncertainty: "it is not currently possible to estimate its fiscal or economic impact due to data limitations."
The employment side of the ledger is modest. Indiana data-center contracts typically commit to between 8 and 50 jobs — a fraction of what a comparably sized industrial or logistics campus would employ. For a deeper look at how these facilities get assessed once built, see our coverage of Indiana data-center assessments and the LEAP hyperscaler buildout.
The Burden-Shifting Question
Here is the part that matters to everyone else who pays property taxes in a district that lands a data center — or grants one a break.
A data center's real property (buildings, site improvements) is assessed and taxable like any other commercial property unless local officials abate it. Its personal property — the racks of servers that often represent enormous value relative to the building shell — can be exempted by local option under the enterprise IT equipment provision. When either exemption is granted:
- The taxing district's net assessed value is smaller than it would otherwise be. School, township, fire, and library levies get spread across a smaller base.
- Tax rates rise relative to the no-exemption scenario. A fixed levy divided by a smaller net AV means a higher rate for everyone still in the base.
- Higher rates push more properties into circuit-breaker cap territory. In Marion County's high-rate districts, that means more homeowners hitting the 1% cap and more cap losses eaten by local units — a dynamic we break down in Indianapolis property tax cap exposure, explained.
Warning
The counterargument — that a data center adds assessed value that would not exist otherwise, so even a partially abated facility grows the base — is real. But it only holds for the portion actually taxed. A campus whose server equipment is fully exempted and whose real property is abated contributes far less to the local base during those years than its investment figure suggests, while still drawing on roads, fire protection, and utilities.
Whether that trade is worth it is a policy call for local officials. What is not debatable is that the terms of these deals — abatement length, personal property treatment, clawbacks — determine how much of the burden shifts to surrounding homeowners and small businesses. Marion County's existing industrial abatements already move meaningful value on and off the rolls each year as they phase out; see our tracker of Marion County industrial abatement phaseouts in 2026.
What Southside Owners Should Watch
Franklin Township residents defeated one rezoning, but the incentives that attracted the project are unchanged, and the withdrawn petition can be refiled. If you own property on the southside:
- Watch rezoning dockets. Project Flo surfaced as an anonymous LLC months before Google was confirmed. Large agricultural rezonings near transmission corridors deserve scrutiny.
- Watch what your district's rate does. Franklin Township already sits in a distinct rate environment relative to the county's other townships — our guide to property tax differences across Marion County's nine townships shows how much district composition matters.
- Distinguish the breaks. A sales tax exemption costs the state. An abatement or personal property exemption reshapes your district's base. Public comment is most effective when aimed at the right decision-maker.
Check Your Own Numbers First
You cannot control what the City-County Council abates, but you can control whether your own assessment is right. Higher district rates make every dollar of over-assessment more expensive — which makes verification and appeal more valuable, not less.
Start with our Indiana property explorer or go straight to Marion County to see your parcel's assessed value alongside your neighbors'. Our property lookup tool surfaces your assessment history and comparable sales, and if your value is out of line, our tax appeal service builds the evidence and files on your behalf.