Surge Development data center (Buck Creek Township), McCordsville, Indiana

The farmland at North 400 West and West 500 North, near McCordsville in Hancock County, Indiana, is where Surge Development wanted to build the Hancock County MegaSite, a data center campus. The Shelbyville developer pulled its petition to rezone 775 acres in Buck Creek Township on 13 May 2025, five days after a four-hour public information session, and before the plan commission could vote.

The site ran across 24 parcels immediately east of Indianapolis Regional Airport, with Buck Creek along its western edge. The preliminary plan showed four buildings for IT systems surrounded by cooling equipment and electrical yards, three administrative buildings and several stormwater ponds, up to 75 feet tall, with the rest of the land held for future industrial uses. Citizens Energy Group was named to supply water, which project leaders said would not come from wells, although a Citizens spokesperson said the company did not yet serve the site. Surge's principal, Chris King, said no company had signed on as an end user.

The land backed directly onto the pick-your-own fields of Tuttle Orchards, a fourth-generation family business, and some residents first heard of the plan on the evening of 15 April 2025, when the orchard's owners, the Roney family, posted a statement opposing it. At the session on 8 May at Greenfield-Central High School, Mike Roney asked officials "to seriously consider if this project brings such an overwhelming benefit to the community that it can constitute sacrificing a longstanding business in the community that cannot be replaced." Nearby resident George Langston said: "We don't have a lot of tourism at all here, and we cannot afford to lose Tuttle's." Not everyone was against it: Tom Redmond said his mother, nearly 90, had agreed to sell her land because it was "a cohesive plan", after turning down a solar developer years earlier.

Erin Brier, a doula who buys the orchard's quiches and pot pies for the families she works with, said: "It feels like it would be two completely different worlds right next to each other." Luke Lomax of Mt. Comfort said a project of that size should bring its own resources: "They should have their own sustainable power grid. They should have their own water source." Gary Kingen, whose family has farmed beside the orchard since 1903, made about 50 "No Data Center" yard signs and worried about drainage: "It doesn't flow very good from 500 North all the way to 900 North." The Save Hancock County Facebook group grew from about 700 members in April to 1,700 by July, and its founder, Leah Lederman, who lost her own house to an earlier warehouse project that was never built, kept a motto: "If you think they're not listening, speak louder."

In its withdrawal statement Surge said it would work with specific users so the community could judge individual projects "with specific details available", and called the MegaSite "a strategically important opportunity to advance the County's economic development and infrastructure goals." In late June 2025 Governor Mike Braun appointed King to the board of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. for a term ending 23 June 2029. In April 2026 the county plan commission voted 5 to 0 to set up a data center study committee, due to report by October, after residents asked the commissioners for a one-year pause. The county has also adopted a data center overlay district that requires Industrial General zoning and a multi-step public process in which the commissioners have the final say. The next proposal arrived in August 2026, nearby: EQT Real Estate filed a letter of intent for a 130 acre campus northwest of County Roads 500 North and 500 West, next to Walmart's IND3 distribution center, offering a one-time payment of $22.2 million and $22 million a year at full buildout.