Provident Realty Advisors data center, Chesterton, Indiana

Provident Realty Advisors of Dallas withdrew its $1.3 billion data center proposal for the former Brassie Golf Course on Pearson Road in Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana, on June 10, 2024, after the Chesterton Town Council said it "could never support this project" at its proposed scale and location. Its request to annex the southernmost 27 acres of the golf course site was withdrawn too.

Provident had proposed eight buildings of 150,000 square feet each and had expected to break ground in early 2026. The campus was to cover a 200-acre parcel, with a bank of backup generators for each building. Company representative George Gonzalez told the Chesterton Plan Commission it would not fence the whole site and would landscape the eastern boundary against noise, and he said the generators would have noise suppressors to hold sound to a maximum of 42 decibels.

Neighbors organized fast. Sixty to 75 people gathered in Dogwood Park on Memorial Day to raise noise, air, water, energy, wetlands, wildlife, home values and the stress of the fight. "I don't think you wanted to be on the town council to make people want to move out of our town which countless citizens will do if this project moves forward," Dogwood Estates resident Jenny Hansen wrote to the council. "But wait, no one will buy our homes." The council held public forums and then wrote that if the proposal were to receive any serious consideration, "the number, size, and height of the buildings would need to be significantly reduced." Reaction to the withdrawal was mixed, with some residents relieved and others lamenting the lost tax dollars and worrying about what else might be pitched for the site.

Porter County has kept pushing back since. In September 2025, QTS dropped plans for a $2 billion data center on 800 acres in Union Township near Wheeler High School after hundreds of residents turned out at a county meeting in Valparaiso, and Agincourt's plan for a data center in Valparaiso was rejected by the local authority that year. On August 10, 2026, the Valparaiso City Council unanimously adopted a data center moratorium that lasts until the city rewrites its zoning, which the planning director expects to take about 18 months to two years. Neighboring Portage created a new Technology Park zone and restricted data centers to it.

The town council statement noted that no data center was on the agenda of either the Chesterton Plan Commission or the Town Council. The land has since drawn housing plans instead: in October 2025 a group led by Michael Herbers of PMM Chesterton LLC, an owner of the former golf course, pitched 632 homes for the site, while a rival group led by Mark Markovich of Mark I Construction proposed a golf course community with 61 single-family homes and 26 paired patio homes. Town spokesperson Kevin Nevers said the owner's proposal of more than 600 units was still in the early stages. Any new data center proposal for the golf course land would go to the Chesterton Plan Commission and Town Council, which set out in 2024 what a smaller plan would need to be considered at all.