Digital Realty has picked 476 acres in Kokomo, Indiana for a potential gigawatt-scale data center campus — a footprint that would put the colocation giant into a state where it currently operates nothing.

The plan calls for three single-story data centers totaling around 1GW of IT capacity across roughly three million sq ft (278,710 sqm) of data center space. That's the equivalent of about 30 typical hyperscale facilities stacked onto one site. Full build-out could land by 2033.

Kokomo sits some 50 miles north of Indianapolis, in Howard County. The land is greenfield, inside the city's Industrial Park North near US 31 and County Road 400 North.

What does the deal change for the market?

For practitioners, the headline is capacity scale and geography. A 1GW campus isn't an edge site or an infill expansion — it's hyperscaler-grade inventory in a market Digital Realty has never touched. Indiana has drawn increasing interest from large-scale developers chasing cheap power and available land outside the saturated Chicago and Northern Virginia corridors.

For Digital Realty itself, Kokomo extends a build pattern we've seen across its portfolio: secure large greenfield parcels near fiber and highway infrastructure, then phase construction over the better part of a decade. The 2033 horizon suggests a multi-phase delivery schedule rather than one big drop of capacity.

Local government flagged Digital's interest earlier this month. The city of Kokomo has laid out two conditions worth noting for anyone tracking how these deals now get done.

• The site will use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water use.
• There will be no tax abatements for any company that develops the site.

Why does the no-abatement detail matter?

That second point is the one practitioners should sit with. Tax incentives have been standard currency in data center siting for two decades, and plenty of states still compete on abatement packages. Kokomo is effectively saying the project stands on its own economics.

It also signals a shift in negotiating leverage. Water-conscious cooling specs and public disclosure of the developer's identity before formal approvals suggest cities now set more of the terms than they once did — particularly in the Midwest, where large sites and grid capacity remain attractive but community scrutiny has sharpened.

The closed-loop cooling commitment fits the same picture. For a campus that could draw over a gigawatt of IT load, cooling architecture is one of the first questions utilities and local regulators ask. A closed-loop design cuts ongoing water draw, which matters in landlocked Indiana even more than in coastal markets.

What happens next?

Digital Realty hasn't confirmed a construction start date, and the 2033 full build-out remains a target rather than a guarantee. The company's current Indiana footprint is zero, so everything here — land acquisition, power procurement, permitting — sits ahead of it.

Watch for utility interconnection filings and Howard County zoning approvals as the next concrete signals. Until those land, Kokomo joins the growing list of announced gigawatt-scale campuses waiting on the grid to catch up to the blueprint.