A 21st Century Colossus and a 188-year-old Town

Amazon Data Centers Bordering New Carlisle, Indiana

A year ago, a 1,200-acre stretch of farmland outside New Carlisle, Ind., was an empty cornfield. Now, seven Amazon data centers rise up from the rich soil, each larger than a football stadium.

Over the next several years, Amazon plans to build around 30 data centers at the site, packed with hundreds of thousands of specialized computer chips. With hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber connecting every chip and computer together, the entire complex will form one giant machine intended just for artificial intelligence.

— The New York Times, June 24, 2025

A trip around the periphery of this colossus, an unmarked, closed construction zone, is especially striking because the structures are surrounded by farmland reaching the horizon, deep green after the summer rains. For a formidable project, the air seems to be clean, and the noise level is low.

The effect is eerie, more sci-fi than industrial.

The New York Times says that Amazon has a forecast of $11 billion for sixteen buildings and now plans almost twice that if it can overcome community opposition to build on a ten-acre wetland. Access to water is a significant issue wherever these centers are located.

There are about four thousand workers on the site, “and there has been such an uptick in congestion and traffic accidents that Amazon agreed to pay $120,000 to cover overtime for traffic enforcement and an additional $7 million for road improvements,” the Times reported.

Minutes away is New Carlisle, a town of 1,900 people. The downtown New Carlisle Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. There has been an operating post office since 1837.

The distance between the site and the town is a manageable bike ride if you’re fit. The contrast is enormous, by any measure a profound development for a community like New Carlisle to absorb.

Dana Groves, the director of New Carlisle’s town museum and gift shop, says her mission is to maintain the character of her hometown, conveyed in the exhibits, and memorabilia housed in the storefront premises and in the surrounding shops and restaurants, including Feeney’s Hometown Goods, whose proprietor, Marcy Kauffman, is the elected president of the Town Council.

After reading this major Times feature about what Amazon is doing nearby, I visited New Carlisle for a sense of the impact on the town. Amazon did not turn down my request for a tour of the site but made it plain that I’d have to be persuasive that I was qualified for one, which, when it comes to the technical purposes of an AI facility, I am not. So, no site tour to report.

Instead, Marcy and Dana joined my wife and me for a relaxed conversation over several hours in the museum, a tour d’horizon of how the nation and the town deals with all that is happening now. With so much focus on political and cultural division in these times — Indiana is a Republican state that Donald Trump carried by a margin of 19 percent in the 2024 election — understanding New Carlisle’s vibe is a necessary starting point.

In summary, Marcy said, “I know there are people who feel the pendulum shifted too far to the left over the years, and now I imagine there are people who feel it is going too far to the right, too fast.

“This is a small town, politics don’t really define us. The majority of us are working for the betterment of our shared community and the school system.”

There is doubtless a spectrum of views on issues, but as Marcy says, the focus is on a quality of life that fits the objectives of a town with its roots in farming and classic Midwestern values. There is considerable pride that the local New Prairie public school district has won state accolades for quality. “A Culture of Excellence” is the motto.

The in-town housing is mainly single-family, with enough restored nineteenth-century homes in and around the main street to sustain the feeling of venerable charm that is its character. The median sale price for homes is around $250,000, an increase in recent years from below $200,000, which to someone from the East Coast is astonishing.

Next door to the museum, Taylor Esposito was serving lunch at Studebaker’s, a bar and restaurant. She has a sales job she does from home and took the job at Studebaker’s because she enjoys the conviviality there. She has three boys, and as we chatted she would check the streaming of a baseball game on her phone; their travel team was playing elsewhere in the county. Sports are a year-round activity for local kids, so much so that Taylor said that a midsummer “moratorium” from practices is declared to give everyone a break.

Her husband is a millwright with a business she says is doing well. The couple are planning a trip to Italy, where the Esposito family came from. Taylor says she keeps informed locally from a lively New Carlisle Facebook page and nationally from TikTok, where she had been seeing footage of the floods in the Texas hill country. There is no longer a New Carlisle-based newspaper.

Studebaker’s sells an assortment of craft beers, brewed on the spot. Evenings at the bar draw a good local crowd, including from among the thousands of workers brought in to build Amazon’s AI sites.

Amazon workers and the activity around the project has given a boost to the town’s economy; restaurants and nearby hotels are busy. The company recognizes that supporting the town with donations to activities and organizations is worth the money spent. The upcoming “Hometown Days,” featuring bingo, a free mobile arcade, and other attractions, lists Amazon as a major sponsor.

The establishment of the Indiana Enterprise Center by the county and the state led a decade ago to the formation of a citizens group called the Open Space Agricultural Alliance, which challenged development plans. In time, farmers accepted the lucrative sale prices and construction in the zone took shape. There are now a dozen or more enterprises there, and a General Motors battery plant is to be one of them.

Amazon’s is the largest project, and people in New Carlisle expect that it will make the biggest difference in the town’s future.

In this summer of turmoil in the United States and in much of the world, New Carlisle has maintained its traditional priorities. On the way to the Amazon site, police cars were blocking the road. An officer, armed and in full protective gear, told us that if we waited a few minutes, the mowing process along the street would be finished.

He gave us directions around the obstacle and said, “Have a terrific rest of your day.”