In May, Becknell Said Its Hobart, IN Warehouses Had Nothing To Do With The Amazon Data Center. In September, The Contract Said They Do

A developer in Hobart, Indiana has asked the city for a ten-year property tax break on four warehouses. The warehouses are not the Amazon data center going up two miles away. According to the contract, they are the buildings meant to serve it.

The developer is Becknell Industrial. The project is a four-building park called NorthWind North, at the southwest corner of 61st Avenue and Liverpool Road. The development agreement says the company will build "industrial warehouse buildings servicing the Amazon Data Center Project at 61st and Colorado Street." Becknell's own project description lists two goals for the park. One is to fill a gap in the Lake County industrial market for smaller tenants, 20,000 square feet and up. The other is to "cater to contractors and providers that are servicing the Amazon Data Center project."

Four months earlier, the company told the city council the opposite.

What Changed Between May And September

On May 19, 2026, the council took up the rezoning for the site. Becknell's representative, Paul Thurston, told the council there would be four buildings and that "this project is not related to the data center project." The Plan Commission had already asked the city to strike the data center wording out of the zoning package and to add more screening and landscaping.

A resident at the same meeting said a Becknell representative had told another meeting that the warehouses had "synergies with the project to the east." A council member answered that there were no synergies with the data center, and that this was an expansion of the NorthWind complex. The council approved the rezoning 6 to 0 on first reading.

The development agreement Becknell later signed opens with the opposite statement. The buildings are for "servicing the Amazon Data Center Project." So does the project description filed with the tax break request.

Both things can be true at once. A speculative industrial park does not need a named tenant when it is rezoned, and it does need a story about demand when it asks for a tax break. But the city rezoned the land after being told the data center was not the reason, and is now being asked to abate taxes on paperwork that says it is.

What Becknell Is Building

Four buildings on four lots. Each lot gets its own tax number, so a tenant who wants to own its building can buy one. Two buildings are 83,363 square feet. Two are 95,243 square feet. Shared upkeep runs through a park association.

Becknell is doing it in two phases. Phase one is the road, the site utilities and the two eastern buildings. The company expects to start in the last three months of 2026 or the first three months of 2027. Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate firm, is handling leasing with Becknell.

Neighbors got changes along the way. When the site plan came back on July 2, 2026, the center turn lane had become a right-in, right-out driveway, shifted west so headlights would not shine into the windows across the street. Plastic fencing was dropped in favor of heavy landscaping. The Plan Commission approved the site plan 8 to 0, with one member stepping aside, on the condition that engineering receive the lighting plan.

What The Tax Break Costs And What It Buys

Baker Tilly Municipal Advisors, the city's outside financial advisor, ran the numbers in an analysis dated August 10, 2026. It priced all four buildings at $100 per square foot, the rate Becknell's existing buildings are assessed at. No value was assumed for the land.

Over ten years, the four buildings would pay about $4,920,000 in property taxes with the break. Without it they would pay about $10,650,000. The gap is about $5,730,000, a little more than half the bill, forgiven over a decade.

Two assumptions sit behind that math. Indiana caps the property tax bill on industrial property at 3 percent of its gross assessed value, so part of the full bill would never be collected anyway. And the advisor assumed that a state credit which currently lowers local tax bills goes away starting with taxes due in 2030, under a new state law. If that assumption is wrong, the numbers move.

The city is not giving the break away for nothing. Becknell owes an exaction fee, a one-time charge equal to 1 percent of what it builds. Hobart has charged it since 2008. The estimate is $523,800. Becknell can pay it in thirds: one third when it pulls the building permit, and one third on each of the next two anniversaries.

The Jobs Number Has A Floor, And It Grew Over The Summer

Becknell promises 200 construction jobs paying $12,000,000 in wages, and 400 permanent jobs paying $24,000,000. That is 50 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs per building. A permanent job here means a full-time equivalent, or FTE, which is the unit cities count in: two half-time workers count as one. Full-time means at least 40 hours a week.

The agreement puts teeth behind that. If the company fails to create and keep at least 86 percent of the 400 permanent jobs, the city can reduce, suspend or end the tax break. That sets a real floor of 344 jobs. There is a matching test on payroll, and the company has to file a compliance form every year to prove it.

The estimate did move, though. In May 2026, Becknell's representative told the council to expect about 150 construction jobs and about 330 permanent jobs. By August, the filing said 200 and 400. Becknell says the estimates come from how many jobs its nearby NorthWind Crossing park created per square foot, from Jones Lang LaSalle market data, and from research on the kinds of companies that typically serve data centers.

One thing to keep straight: these permanent jobs are not Amazon's. They belong to whoever leases the warehouses.

The Data Center Itself

The Amazon project sits south of 61st Avenue, east of Colorado Street and north of 69th Avenue, on land zoned for light industry. It is large. The site plan the Plan Commission approved on May 7, 2026 covers about 605 acres. The single-lot subdivision under it, called Hobart Tech Park, covers about 555 acres. Both passed 8 to 0. A second piece southeast of 61st and Arizona Street, about 168 acres, was approved the same night. The commission also sent the council a favorable recommendation, 8 to 0, on rezoning 2.352 acres from housing to light industry.

The land assembly started earlier. In September 2025 a company called Hobart Devco asked the city to give up an unused strip of platted road, 1,545 feet by 80 feet, for a proposed data center. Construction is now underway. Hobart has hired the Skillman Corporation to watch the site and check that the work follows the rules.

On September 2, 2026 a resident asked whether the city had studied the revenue it would lose to tax breaks near the data center. Mayor Josh Huddlestun answered that the development requesting the abatement is not for data centers. That is accurate. It is also why this project is worth reading closely: the break is for the buildings that follow the data center in.

The Sewer Permit Is The Gate

On April 28, 2026 the city's sanitary board heard a short update from its attorney. The city will not issue a sewer connection permit for the data center until every project tied to it is paid for. Without the connection, he said, the building cannot be operated.

About 15 projects are tied to Amazon. They include sanitary system improvements, a new pump station that lifts sewage uphill, a roundabout, and the Colorado Street sewer. At that point, the attorney said, proof of bonds and insurance was the main thing holding Amazon up.

Zoning approval lets a building go up. A sewer permit decides whether it can be used.

Hobart Is Repricing What It Costs To Connect

Hobart is also changing what new customers pay to hook into the sewer. The sanitary board had Baker Tilly study whether the old connection fees still covered the cost. After a public hearing on September 8, 2026, the board recommended a new schedule, and the council took it up on September 16 as Ordinance 2026-34.

The fee is set by the size of the water meter. A house on a standard meter pays $1,970. A 2-inch meter costs $19,700. A 6-inch meter costs $179,270. A 12-inch meter, the size a very large user would need, costs $718,656. Meter sizes not on the list get priced by formula. The new fees replace the old ones in the city code the day the ordinance passes.

There is an escape hatch. At the written request of the mayor, explaining the reason and how it would benefit the city, the sanitary board may waive all or part of a connection fee if it finds that doing so is in the best interest of the district and its customers. So the published schedule is the starting point, not always the final number.

Residents Are Still Pushing

The opposition has not gone quiet. Its questions have moved from whether to build to how the project is being run.

In November 2025 a resident told the council she was part of a group fighting what she called $9 billion in heavy industrial data center plans on 61st Avenue. Another asked how pumping groundwater out of the site would affect neighbors on well water. A council member said he was still looking into it.

In July 2026 a resident told the council the city had spent more than $200,000 on legal fees tied to the data center. She said an independent health study residents had asked for would have cost about $150,000, and that the city could have asked the developer to pay for it.

In August 2026 the questions got technical. A resident raised diesel fuel storage at the site and asked about the air permit, which lists an older-tier engine fitted with cleaner emission controls. She asked whether air quality would be monitored continuously. The mayor said inspectors are on site.

Timeline

• September 2025: A developer asks Hobart to give up an unused platted road strip for a proposed data center.
• November 2025: Residents fill council meetings over well water, dewatering and the scale of the project.
• April 28, 2026: The sanitary board is told no sewer connection permit will issue until the roughly 15 projects tied to Amazon are paid for.
• May 7, 2026: The Plan Commission approves the data center site plan and the Hobart Tech Park subdivision, both 8 to 0.
• May 19, 2026: Becknell tells the council its project is not related to the data center. The council rezones the site 6 to 0 on first reading.
• July 2, 2026: The Plan Commission approves the four-building site plan 8 to 0, with traffic and landscaping changes.
• August 10, 2026: The city's financial advisor prices the tax break at about $5,730,000 over ten years.
• September 2, 2026: The council declares the area eligible for the break, 7 to 0, and tables the development agreement because it is not finished.
• September 16, 2026: The agreement returns to the council, along with the new sewer connection fees.
• October 7, 2026: Public hearing on the tax break.

What Is Still Unsettled

• The tax break is not final. The council declared the area eligible. The public hearing is October 7, and the confirming vote comes after it.
• The development agreement was tabled on September 2 because it was still being written. It came back on September 16. No minutes have been published yet to show what the council did with it.
• Two completion dates are in the record for the same phase. The agreement says May 2027. The statement of benefits filed for the tax break says July 2027.
• The site size shifts between documents: 25.02 acres in the agreement, 25.83 acres in the abatement table, 26.78 acres in the zoning petition. The square footage is 356,424 in one place and 357,212 in another.
• Nobody has published a study of what the tax breaks near the data center will cost Hobart in revenue. A resident asked for one on September 2. She did not get one.

Why It Matters Beyond Hobart

Hobart expects a little over $2 billion in taxable property across the whole city next year. A data center campus of 605 acres changes a tax base that size. So does the ring of buildings that follows it in.

Three patterns here repeat wherever a large data center lands. Suppliers arrive behind the anchor project and ask for their own tax breaks, months after the main project clears zoning. Utility conditions, not zoning votes, control when a building can operate. And the cost of connecting to water and sewer gets repriced once a city sees what a project this size demands.

Hobart's next date is October 7.