The project promises to create jobs and bring millions of dollars of revenue to the city, but even with the city's enthusiastic support it is not yet a done deal. Whether the facility will have its massive electricity needs met remains an open question and the subject of negotiations with NIPSCO.
The Chicago-based Decennial Group is planning a 450,000 square-foot expansion of the Digital Crossroads data center complex on the shore of Lake Michigan. CoreWeave, a New Jersey -based cloud computing business focused on artificial intelligence applications, is seeking to expand its presence in the complex into a new ultra-high-capacity "hyperscaler" data center that will provide computing power for the company's clients. Both companies sought tax breaks from the city that were granted on Monday.
Centennial is set to receive a 10-year tax abatement that will see property taxes on the new improvements gradually phased in over the next decade. Arrangements of this sort between municipalities and large-scale developers are commonplace. The agreement will also suspend 100% of taxes that CoreWeave would otherwise pay on equipment installed at the facility for a period of 20 years.
In exchange, Hammond will receive an annual community impact payment of up to $4 million.
"This project is much bigger than the entire assessed value for the entire city," Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. told the council. "This is the largest project we've ever worked on in the city of Hammond."
The community impact payment, he underscored, could mean two decades of full funding for Hammond's College Bound program, which provides scholarships to eligible students living in owner-occupied homes.
"That's going to help us sell houses," McDermott said. "It's going to help us keep our population. And we're going to have the biggest, most advanced data center in the United States located right here in our city."
The development agreement is contingent on the developers making an deal with NIPSCO to meet the data center's electricity needs, and will be void if no agreement is reached.
Councilman Mark Kalwinski, D-1st, joined the seven other present council members in voting for the development agreement, but voiced concerns over the new data center's impact on Hammond residents' access to electricity.
"It might be doable and I hope it is," he said. "But in the event that there are shortages of power and they can't get it from other vendors quick enough, who gets browned out?"
Mike Terlizzi, CoreWeave's vice president data center operations, told the councilman that "you're not wrong at all to have concerns about the overall planning process."
He stressed, however, that data centers consume power at a highly consistent rate, meaning that if NIPSCO can arrange additional capacity for the facility, its impact on the local power grid should be minimal. Terlizzi added that the new data center won't need to be supplied with electricity for another two years.
"And so we have between now and 2027 to finalize the procurement of power, some of which will come off of power plants that aren't even built yet," he said.
Following a request from Kalwinski, McDermott agreed to seek the presence of NIPSCO representatives at the council's next meeting. He told the councilman that he was unsure of whether the company would oblige.
In a statement to The Times, NIPSCO director of communications Wendy Lussier wrote that the company "is excited about the growth and economic development opportunities that data centers can bring to Northern Indiana."
"Data centers mean more jobs for the state of Indiana and increased tax revenues which can be re-invested in our communities and help diversify the industry sectors located in Indiana," she wrote. "Our teams continue to talk with financially and technically qualified potential customers who are interested in investing in the state of Indiana by bringing data centers into our region."
©2025 The Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
