St. Joseph County, IN Data Centers & Crypto Mining: Data Center Zoning & Siting (2026)

318 to promote advanced manufacturing, smart logistics, agribusiness and industrial development with higher aesthetic and sustainability standards. 318(B)(2) reserves mapping the overlay onto a property for the area plan commission or the board of county commissioners, and once mapped it applies over every base zoning district except the A: Agricultural district. 319-1 governs which uses are allowed in the overlay, and that a "P" designation means the use is permitted by right and is not subject to further review, while "C" and "S" trigger conditional or special use hearings.

Under the table's Industrial Uses category, "Data Center" carries a "P," alongside other by-right industrial uses such as contractor yards and offices, distribution facilities and truck terminals, flex industrial, and general manufacturing and assembly operations. 321 defines a data center as a location housing one or more large computer systems and related equipment, concerned with building, maintaining, or processing data and providing other data processing services. 319(H) for roughly the first year after a building's certificate of occupancy. The overlay separately bans a short list of heavy industrial uses outright, including slaughterhouses, sewage treatment plants, coal and nuclear power plants, and metal shredders, none of which cover data centers.

Outside land actually carrying the IEC overlay designation, this specific "Data Center" line item does not apply, so a project on ordinary industrial-zoned land elsewhere in the county would instead need to fit the base district's general manufacturing or warehousing use categories.