Michigan City, Indiana is a small city on Lake Michigan. Driving through the community, here is what you see:

A cooling tower for a power plant is hard to miss. How does this affect development or the waterfront experience? A Chicago Tribune article from October 2025 describes the scene:

The city of 33,000, a mixture of blue-collar workplace and lakefront playground, has benefited from several major developments in recent years. It is the home of a planned $300 million luxury hotel and townhouse development called SoLa (South of the Lake).

Last year, the addition of a second railroad track and new train station on the Metra South Shore Line cut commute times to Chicago to about an hour. It also is a gateway to the Indiana Dunes, which saw the number of visitors in recent years jump to around 3 million after it became a national park…

Other new developments include a $100 million, 12-story, mixed-use building at the train station called The Franklin, and 33 new single-family homes at Woodland Ridge…

But any plan to increase tourism in town will have to address a lurking eyesore that dominates the otherwise gorgeous lakefront: a giant concrete power plant cooling tower known to some locally as “the monstrosity,” that mars the views of the lakefront from every direction. Though the structure is for a coal power plant, visitors often assume it is for a nuclear plant.

NIPSCO, the company that operates the plant, says it plans to close the facility by the end of 2028. But NIPSCO also has plans to open a new gas-powered plant to power a coming data center, so it’s not clear what will become of the old plant.

The contrast is clear: waterfront property close to Chicago that is less desirable because of industry and a cooling tower. Move away from the industry and power plant and property values are higher and redevelopment opportunities more enticing. Removing a cooling tower several hundred feet tall would definitely change the local scenery. It may be a while – or never – before a residential tower reaches similar heights but the development already happening hints that more could be on the way.

This is certainly not the only waterfront community in the Midwest or in the United States with a power plant on the water. From places I have been in recent years, I also recall a power plant on the water in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Or communities with major industrial works. Gary, Indiana is not too far away or the southeast side of Chicago.

With ongoing needs for power and resistance to power plants when they are proposed for certain places, where could a power plant like this go? Few people today would proposed a power plant along the water in or near population centers. Northern Indiana does have more open space away from the water – but land would need to be acquired, local approvals would be needed, demolition in Michigan City would have to happen. Power plants have to go somewhere, even if they are addressing issues raised by construction decisions from decades ago.