You cannot build an $11 billion data center on farmland still zoned for corn. Someone has to vote to change that.
On March 12, 2024, eight members of the St. Joseph County Council voted to do exactly that for a shell company called Razor5. Razor5 was Amazon. Amy Drake was one of the eight yes votes. Joe Thomas, the Republican whose district contained the parcel, was the only no vote.
Drake voted yes again the same night to extend the Indiana Enterprise Center (IEC) overlay over the same ground. 9-0. Two affirmative votes in one evening, both essential, both handing the land to a data center.
Everything that has happened on that land since flowed from those two votes. Project Rainier. The world’s largest non-Nvidia AI cluster. The dewatering fights. The dried wells. The $4 billion in tax abatements the county approved five months later. The March 12 rezoning was the permission slip. Drake signed it.
On May 13, 2025, the County Council unanimously approved an additional 40 acres for Microsoft’s Granger campus. 9-0. Drake was part of the unanimity. The Amazon campus was already under construction. Her constituents were packing library rooms demanding answers, but nobody would answer them. Drake had a clean, cost-free chance to stand against the 40 acre expansion. Instead, she ignored the opposition and voted yes.
New Carlisle residents who watched a thousand acres of farmland turn into an AI supercomputer can thank Drake’s March 12, 2024 yes vote. Granger residents who watched Microsoft break ground can thank Drake’s May 13, 2025 yes vote for the extra acreage. The dewatering permits, the traffic, the noise, the four billion in abatements, the pressure for a third campus that only months of public revolt managed to kill: all of it traces back to Amy Drake’s yes votes.
You can oppose the next data center all day long.
You cannot pretend you voted against the data centers that have been built on land you voted to rezone.