$2B DC BLOX Indianapolis Campus Needs 11 Low Voltage Systems

A $2 billion data center headline, and only about $650 million of it is a building. DC BLOX's approved Thunderbird campus on Indianapolis' east side needs eleven low voltage systems and an estimated $45 million in LV work — and the published cost breakdown is the clearest lesson in data center estimating we have seen all year.

Project Overview

Project data shows DC BLOX developing a data center campus at 305 Fintail Drive in the Thunderbird Commerce Center, Marion County, Indianapolis. It is DC BLOX's first development in Indiana.

The approved plan of operation, dated July 14, 2026, describes a two-building campus: Building 1 at roughly 70,000 square feet and Building 2 at roughly 250,000 square feet. The site carries an existing substation, and the buildings will use closed-loop cooling. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission approved the project 6–1 on July 15, 2026 following a public hearing, after it cleared a hearing examiner in June.

Phase 1 can begin once variance and replat approvals are secured, with the first building expected within 24 months and full buildout running roughly five years.

Project	DC BLOX Thunderbird Indianapolis Campus
Location	305 Fintail Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46219 (Marion County)
Total Investment	$1.8B – $2.0B (including tenant hardware)
DC BLOX Land / Site / Building	$600M – $700M
Tenant IT Hardware	$1.2B – $1.3B
Approved Scale	2 buildings, ~320,000 sq ft (70K + 250K)
Power	Existing substation on site
Status	MDC approved 6–1, July 15 2026; variance and replat pending
LV Score	8/10

The Cost Breakdown Is Published. Use It.

LVN spends a lot of time warning against applying a percentage to a headline data center number, because those figures usually bundle land, buildings, and IT hardware into one press-release total. Normally you have to infer the split.

Here you do not have to infer anything. The plan of operation states it:

• $600 million to $700 million — DC BLOX land, site, and building investment
• $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion — tenant servers, networking equipment, and high-performance hardware

Roughly two thirds of the headline is computers. Servers, switches, and GPUs are bought by the tenant and racked by the tenant. They are not a construction package, they carry no cable tray, and no low voltage contractor bids them.

Apply LVN's 4% hyperscale rule to the $2 billion headline and you get $80 million. That number is wrong by roughly 70%, and a contractor who builds a business case on it is planning around revenue that does not exist.

Correct Basis (building investment)	$600M – $700M
Data Center LV Percentage	6% (construction-value basis)
System Count Multiplier	1.25x (11 systems)
Calculated Range	$45M – $52.5M gross
Estimated LV Contract Value	approximately $45 million
Planning Range	$40 million – $52 million

One further adjustment: the $600–700 million figure includes land, and land carries no low voltage. That argues for the lower half of the calculated range, which is why the headline estimate sits at $45 million rather than the $49 million midpoint.

The general rule this project illustrates cleanly: find the building number before you multiply anything. When a filing separates real property from IT equipment, that separation is the most valuable line in the document.

It Got Smaller — Bid the Approved Scope

The second lesson here is about which version of a project you are actually pricing.

Earlier filings described a three-building, roughly 410,000 square foot campus — an 80,000 square foot single-story building plus two-story buildings at 140,000 and 190,000 square feet. Following opposition from the neighboring Irvington community, DC BLOX downsized the plan, and what the Metropolitan Development Commission approved is the two-building, roughly 320,000 square foot campus described above.

That is a reduction of roughly 90,000 square feet and an entire building. A contractor who built a takeoff from the spring announcement is pricing a facility that no longer exists.

Data center entitlement is increasingly contested, particularly in residential-adjacent locations, and scope moves during that process. The practical discipline is simple: track the approved plan of operation, not the press release, and re-check it before you commit a number. Signal's record here reflects the July 14 approved plan for exactly that reason.

Low Voltage Systems Breakdown

Signal tracks eleven low voltage systems on this campus — the full mission-critical stack, delivered across two buildings over about five years.

System	Category	Scope Description	Complexity
Fiber	Data	Single-mode backbone within and between the two buildings, MPO/MTP trunk architecture, and high-density patching. Smaller than a hyperscale campus, but the design discipline is identical.	Very High
Structured Cabling	Data/Voice	Horizontal and backbone copper, cabinet-level patching, overhead pathway and ladder rack across roughly 320,000 square feet plus admin and operations space. Note that DC BLOX is a colocation operator, so cabling has to support multiple tenants with separate cages and separate demarcation — a different problem from a single-tenant hyperscale hall.	High
Outside Plant	Data	Campus duct bank, handholes and vaults, carrier entrance, and diverse-path routing between buildings and to meet-me points. Carrier diversity is a selling point for a colocation provider, so entrance pathway design matters commercially, not just technically.	High
Access Control	Security	Perimeter-to-cage layered credentialing. Colocation raises the bar considerably: multiple customers in one building means cage-level access, auditable trails per tenant, and escort workflows that a single-tenant facility never needs.	Very High
CCTV	Security	Perimeter, yard, substation approach, entries, corridors, and data hall coverage with long retention. Colocation customers frequently require documented camera coverage of their own cages as part of their compliance posture.	High
Fire Alarm	Life Safety	Addressable detection with very early warning aspirating smoke detection in data halls, integrated with clean-agent or pre-action release and the electrical and mechanical shutdown matrix. Indianapolis AHJ coordination on a first-of-kind facility in the township adds review time.	Very High
BMS / Controls	Building Automation	Closed-loop cooling plant control, containment and thermal monitoring, generator and substation status integration, and EPMS tie-ins across two buildings sharing campus infrastructure.	Very High
Networking	Data	Facility, OT, and security network infrastructure separate from tenant compute — the layer that keeps the campus observable and manageable.	High
DAS	Wireless	In-building cellular for staff and visiting tenant technicians, plus public safety radio coverage verified by the fire authority. Colocation means a constant stream of outside personnel who expect their phones to work in a data hall.	Medium-High
Grounding & Bonding	Infrastructure	Signal reference and telecom bonding backbone, ground rings, cabinet and pathway bonding to IEEE and BICSI practice, coordinated with the existing substation's grounding system — which, because it already exists, must be verified rather than assumed.	High
Commissioning	Validation	Levels 1 through 5 including integrated systems testing, executed twice across a phased two-building delivery with roughly two years between them.	Very High

Why This One Is More Winnable Than a Hyperscale Campus

DC BLOX is not a hyperscaler. It is a regional colocation and connectivity operator focused on underserved markets, and that changes the opportunity profile in ways worth naming.

The buildings are a normal size. A 70,000 square foot first building is a scope a strong regional integrator can staff and deliver. Compare that to the multi-million square foot campuses LVN has covered in Boling, Tulsa, and Effingham County, where the qualifying conversation starts with whether you can field hundreds of technicians.

The phasing is generous. Phase 1 is one building within 24 months. Phase 2 is the larger building starting roughly two years out. That is a sequence a mid-size contractor can grow into rather than a single overwhelming mobilization.

Nothing is awarded. Reviewed public sources name no general contractor or EPCM, no electrical contractor, no low voltage, fiber, or outside plant contractor, no structured cabling firm, no security integrator, no fire alarm contractor, no BMS or EPMS controls firm, no DAS or networking contractor, no grounding contractor, and no commissioning provider. Entitlement is essentially done; the build team is not.

The power question is already answered. The site carries an existing substation. LVN has covered what happens when it does not — finished buildings in Santa Clara sitting dark waiting on interconnection. A campus with power already on the parcel is a campus that will energize, commission, and close out.

Market Signal

Indianapolis is the second Indiana data center market LVN has tracked this summer, after Meta's $10 billion campus in Lebanon. Those two projects could not be more different in scale, and that contrast is the useful part: Indiana is now absorbing both hyperscale and regional colocation demand, which means the state is building a mission-critical contractor base rather than importing one for a single job.

The other signal is the entitlement fight itself. This project cleared a hearing examiner in June, drew organized neighborhood opposition, was voluntarily downsized, and then passed the Metropolitan Development Commission 6–1. That is becoming the standard path for data centers near residential areas, and it has a direct consequence for contractors: the gap between announcement and approved scope is widening, and the approved scope is the one that gets built. Reading the plan of operation rather than the press coverage is turning into a real estimating skill.

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