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As of November 2026
The town's economy in November 2026 has two ages running at once: the steel age that never left, and the data age arriving at a scale the town's 1,891 people did not choose and cannot ignore. The employers, named and ranked by their weight on this ground:
Amazon Web Services — Project Rainier, the Indiana Enterprise Center, east of town. Announced in April 2024 at $11 billion, the campus passed its own commitment within two years: by 23 July 2026 WNDU reported $13.8 billion invested, roughly eighteen buildings operating on the way to about thirty (the full build in trade coverage runs to some thirty-two buildings and 2.25 gigawatts of draw), and more than a thousand people hired; the campus trains and serves Anthropic's models, and the New York Times of 24 June 2025 called it the company's largest data center. It is the largest single fact in the town's economy and it stands in Olive Township, east of the town line.
Samsung SDI — the SynergyCells plant, 680 acres. The plant's state this month is a finished shell and an open plan. The General Motors–Samsung SDI joint venture — announced April 2023, finalized 28 August 2024, about $3.5 billion, 27 gigawatt-hours initial capacity rising to 36, more than 1,600 jobs promised — completed its building's exterior and paused construction in May 2026 "to align production capacity with current demand." On 11 August 2026 Samsung SDI acquired GM's 49.99 percent and took sole ownership — its first wholly-owned North American cell site — adding an energy-storage line beside the automotive tooling, backed by its 10 December 2025 contract, worth more than $1.35 billion, to supply LFP energy-storage cells with deliveries beginning in 2027 from its Indiana facility. The Tribune of 24 October 2026 reports the plant "will move forward," the county still unsure of the project's shape — GM remains owner of the land around the building — with a meeting between the county and Samsung's team being set for late October or the first week of November, and the original development agreement's completion deadline standing at December 2027, extendable only with county sign-off. As of this writing the restart date is not public, the final investment plan is not finalized, and the plant has produced nothing; it prints as what it is — the town's largest promise, mid-revision.
Cleveland-Cliffs — I/N Tek and I/N Kote. The cold-rolling and coating works west of town are the standing industry of the town's second age: built as joint ventures of Inland and Nippon Steel at the turn of the 1990s, carried through the ArcelorMittal years, and wholly Cleveland-Cliffs' since December 2020, when Cliffs took both the ArcelorMittal USA interests and Nippon Steel's remaining shares (about $183 million for the latter) to hold both plants entire. They are the employer the new rail yard would serve and the reason a Cleveland-Cliffs plant anchors the county's freight planning on this corridor.
Lightsource bp — Honeysuckle Solar. The 188-megawatt plant on about a thousand acres entered service in 2024 and stands as the township's third energy fact: generation without a workforce of size, on farmland the argument also claims.
The school corporation and the town. The New Prairie United School Corporation — three of its five schools in town — and the town and township governments are the public employers of the town's daily economy, carried whole in their own sections.
Around these anchors the argument continues in its current form: the third data center, a $12 billion rezoning of 1,057 acres along Chicago Trail rejected 7–2 in the early hours of 10 December 2025 (one reference prints the project at $13 billion; both figures stand in the Story of New Carlisle section), has not returned in the record reached, its six-month window having opened in June 2026; and on 22 September 2026 the County Council voted 6–3 to begin a process toward banning further hyperscale data centers in the county's unincorporated area — a resolution directing the Area Plan Commission to draft the zoning amendments and definitions, preliminary and not itself a ban, with a two-year moratorium also carried as an election question into November. AWS's own account of its presence, given in a 9 July 2026 Tribune opinion column and quoted in the council coverage, runs the other way: more than $1.5 million in community grants and sponsorships, a playground at La Casa de Amistad, the first Think Big STEM lab in Indiana at New Prairie High School, and sponsorship of New Carlisle Hometown Days and Christmas in New Carlisle two years running. Both accounts print; the town lives between them.
Principal sources: WNDU, 23 July 2026; South Bend Tribune, 24 October 2026 (the Samsung update), 23 September 2026 (the 6–3 ban-process vote), and December 2025 (the rezoning rejection); Samsung SDI announcements of 10 December 2025 and 11 August 2026; Cleveland-Cliffs acquisition record, December 2020; this build's spine (the remaking, at the strengths there printed).