Zoning in LaPorte County, Indiana: The Microsoft Data Center Campus and a New 2026 Ordinance

The trigger: a roughly $1 billion Microsoft campus and a 1,000-acre annexation

Governor Holcomb announced a roughly $1 billion Microsoft data center campus in La Porte, Indiana's first Microsoft data center location in the state. Reporting describes an initial roughly 489-to-500-acre footprint with multiple buildings already under construction and plans to expand toward as many as 17 total buildings on the site, with NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company) working directly with Microsoft on the electric infrastructure the campus needs. In 2026, the LaPorte Common Council voted to move forward with annexing roughly 1,000 additional acres of nearby farmland specifically to support further campus expansion -- a scale of land conversion that reshaped how both the city and the county think about zoning for this specific industry.

This isn't an isolated event for the region: Google has separately been developing a data center campus near Michigan City within the same county, and Amazon Web Services announced a large-scale Indiana data-center and AI-infrastructure investment in November 2025. LaPorte County's exposure to this kind of large-footprint industrial development is likely to continue rather than end with the Microsoft campus.

A new data center ordinance: industrial zones only, BZA approval required

In direct response, the LaPorte County Plan Commission spent roughly from October 2025 through May 2026 drafting a data center ordinance for unincorporated county territory, ultimately advancing it to the county commissioners with an 8-1 favorable recommendation. As reported by WSBT, WNDU, and WVPE, the ordinance's core provision protects agricultural land: only industrial-zoned parcels can be zoned for a data center use, meaning a proposed facility on farmland or in a residential district would need a rezoning first, not just a special-use approval. Any proposed data center must also go through the Board of Zoning Appeals, and the ordinance sets standards for setbacks, noise levels, water usage, and requires training for local fire departments to respond to a data center's specific hazards.

One important scope limit: this ordinance applies only to unincorporated portions of LaPorte County -- it does not reach land inside the City of LaPorte or Michigan City, both of which administer data-center siting through their own zoning authority within the county's broader Joint Zoning Ordinance framework. That means the Microsoft campus itself, sited partly through city annexation, is governed by municipal rather than county zoning in key respects, even though the new county ordinance was written specifically because of the pressure that project created.

A parallel, multi-year solar ordinance saga

Running alongside the data-center story, LaPorte County has separately worked through commercial solar-siting rules for several years: a 2023-dated draft ordinance, a 2024 solar-moratorium consideration reported by WSBT amid resident concerns over farmland loss and wildlife impact, a June 2025 draft update, and an August 2025-dated document the county's own site labels a "FINAL Solar Ordinance." A previously approved RWE Clean Energy solar project in the county carries a 250-foot setback from other properties as a specific condition of its approval, though this research pass could not confirm whether that figure matches the ordinance's general standard for every future project.

Given how many separate draft versions of this ordinance surfaced during this research pass -- spanning 2023 through at least August 2025 -- treat the solar ordinance's exact currently-adopted setback distance, minimum/maximum acreage, and farmland-percentage limits as unconfirmed pending a direct check with the Plan Commission, rather than something this page states with full confidence.

What to check before buying near either development

• Confirm whether a specific parcel sits in unincorporated LaPorte County (subject to the new data center ordinance and general county zoning) or inside LaPorte City/Michigan City limits (subject to municipal zoning under the same Joint Zoning Ordinance)
• If evaluating industrial-zoned land, ask the Plan Commission whether it falls within the data center ordinance's eligible area and what setback, noise, and water-use standards currently apply
• For agricultural land anywhere in the county, ask directly whether a solar lease offer or nearby proposed project reflects the ordinance's currently-adopted terms, since several draft versions have circulated since 2023
• If buying near the Microsoft campus or the 2026 annexation area, confirm current jurisdiction (county versus City of LaPorte) and whether any additional annexation is pending for the specific parcel