A data center set to be built on southeast Michigan farmland is the latest example of what rural communities face as demand rapidly grows for sprawling warehouses to support artificial intelligence.

Data centers tend to bring influxes of local tax revenue and offer the promise of more economic development. But the relationship between data centers — backed by multibillion-dollar companies with deep pockets and strong political ties — and small jurisdictions is inherently unbalanced, as residents and officials in Saline Township, southwest of Ann Arbor, have learned.

The Saline Township board in September voted to block plans for a 1.4-gigawatt data center backed by Oracle, ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Related Digital, a firm with ties to billionaire Stephen Ross, a major University of Michigan donor.

Related Digital sued within days. Faced with a potentially expensive court battle against Oracle (valued by investors at more than $600 billion), OpenAI (valued at roughly $500 billion) and a company tied to Ross' business empire, the local board reversed course and settled.

"You've got to understand where we come from," Trustee Dean Marion told upset residents at a Saline Township meeting Wednesday. "We’ve been here our whole lives. The township does not have the money to fight these big companies. We’re not for it. I hate it."

Related Digital, in a response to an inquiry from The Detroit News, said in an email Thursday that "it is important to know that we have always enjoyed significant community support in Saline Township, and from the beginning, many members of the community and neighbors greatly preferred our proposal to the alternatives that would have been developed on the site had our project not moved forward."

Related also noted it made presentations at 10 public meetings from July 8 through Monday.

Developers want to break ground on the project early next year, pending approval by the Michigan Public Service Commission on DTE Energy Co.'s proposal to power the campus. DTE is asking regulators to fast-track the project, which would bypass a lengthier review that includes public hearings.

Kathryn Haushalter, who lives next to the 250 acres of land slated for the data center, said she already sees industrial construction lights streaming through her bedroom window "instead of starlight."

"Nobody’s here to protect me," Haushalter said at the township meeting where residents criticized the board for not stopping the project. "Nobody’s here to protect us."

Analyses by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, predict there will be roughly $7 trillion in land and property investments for data center infrastructures globally by 2030 — an effort to meet increasing global demand for capacity that's expected to nearly triple by that time.

Related has not specified the project's total cost in Saline.

But for low-population municipalities like Saline and others in Michigan, data center development can bring transformational new tax revenue. Phil Santer, the chief operating officer of economic development group Ann Arbor Spark, said the Saline data center is estimated to bring in roughly $20 million in property taxes annually after tax breaks.

About $8 million of that is expected to go to public schools statewide, Santer said. Related Digital also agreed to give $14 million to local fire departments, a community investment fund and a farmland preservation trust as part of its deal with Saline Township, where the city hall sits on a dirt road.

For context, Saline Township's total operating budget in 2024 was less than $1 million. Saline City Manager Dan Swallows said he envisions the project bringing people to the area.

"There will be jobs on site, but there will also be service jobs developed due to the additional income in the area," Swallows said. "Restaurants, convenience stores, diners — we could see an influx of residents and growth in our housing market. "We're very excited in the investment in the local economy."

Rural areas offer what cities cannot, Santer said: land. Hyperscale data centers, like the one planned for Saline Township, can encompass hundreds of acres.

Like other large developments, farmland is also sought because the land is cheaper and property taxes are lower than they would be in urban areas, said Sarah Mills, director of UM’s Center for EmPowering Communities, which studies the impact of energy projects on local communities.

She said residents in these areas tend to be farmers and those who like a slower, quieter life. Any kind of development raises questions about the impact it will have, Mills said.

“To have something like this show up on your doorstep, that’s a big change,” said Dan Wells, a community development director in Gaines Charter Township, a suburban Grand Rapids community that's home to a Switch data center. “That can be shocking to a lot of people. I respect that.

"You don’t necessarily want to see this sort of thing just scattered across the landscape in rural areas. You want people who are in leadership positions to make decisions about where it’s appropriate.”

More data centers are coming, Wells said. Communities need to be ready for both the potential risks and benefits.

“You want to make sure your basic planning documents are thought through and you are ready for something like this rather than playing defense against a large company with a lot of resources,” Wells said. “I think a lot of jurisdictions aren’t ready for it because it’s such a new phenomenon. This was just not an industry three years ago. Nobody saw this on the horizon.”

'None of us up here wanted this'

About 100 people crammed into the Saline Township Hall to protest the project Wednesday. Residents cited concerns about the environmental impact of the project and said they felt betrayed by Michigan's political leaders, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who they said were willing to steamroll them in favor of multibillion-dollar corporations.

Trustees say they were in an impossible spot. The tiny township didn't have the money to fight Related Digital's lawsuit, they said.

“None of us up here wanted this,” Trustee Marion said. The trustees also didn't have the political power to go against a project the governor was touting, they said during the meeting.

"I don’t know what we can do," Treasurer Jennifer Zink said. "If the state wants it here, I think a judge would've favored it because Gretchen Whitmer wants it here. Do you not understand? She took full credit."

A Whitmer spokesperson did not immediately comment on the Saline Township complaints Thursday.

Whitmer previously described the data center as "the largest economic project in Michigan history."

“I’m grateful to these cutting-edge companies for betting on Michigan, building on our work to compete for and win big projects in next-generation industries from cars and clean energy to semiconductors and batteries," she said in a statement announcing the project last month. “We will continue working together at the state level to win more projects so we can create even more good-paying, local jobs for Michiganders and grow our economy."

Whitmer last week called for public hearings on the proposal to give residents a chance to weigh in.

West Michigan data center 'not very controversial'

The Switch data center in Gaines Charter Township didn’t generate the kind of outcry that the Saline Township and other data centers under development are garnering from their neighbors, said Wells, the township's community development director. He suspects that’s because the facility was built inside a vacant existing building — the “pyramid” that previously had housed furniture company Steelcase’s corporate offices — and in an industrial zone.

“It was not unexpected where they placed that data center in our township," he said. "That’s an industrial area; it’s always been zoned for that. So that was not very controversial at all. I don’t think we ever had any public comment about it.”

The Switch facility is expanding. Gaines Charter Township approved a second phase of development in 2021, which the company is nearly finished building. Wells said the company has described a third phase of construction but hasn’t put forth plans for approval.

Wells said the hyperscale data center projects proposed in other areas of the state differ from the township’s Switch facility. The pyramid is 531,423 square feet and the expansion would add another 311,000. The Saline Township plan calls for three single-story buildings, each sized at 550,000 square feet.

In Gaines Charter Township, data centers are considered “light industrial” land use, Wells said, and are allowed in areas zoned for light industrial uses or, with permission, areas named as future industrial zones. If the township were a dinner table, data center developers would know where they are invited to sit.

Communities should rewrite their master plans and zoning ordinances to outline where data center development would or would not be appropriate, he said.

Officials in Jerome Township, Ohio, in September enacted a nine-month pause on new data centers in the suburban Columbus municipality, which currently houses two Amazon data centers. Each data center sits on at least 80 acres of land, Jerome Township zoning inspector Eric Snowden said.

In a resolution, township trustees wrote that data centers "consume vast amounts of land, electricity and often water depending on their cooling technology, thereby creating a tremendous strain on public resources and infrastructure."

Trustees wrote that they need time to review zoning rules to make sure Jerome Township is ready and able to handle future data center developments.

"We need to hit pause, and we need to really look at what the return on investment is here for our township," Trustee Wezlynn Davis said during a Sept. 3 meeting. "I don't find data centers to be the best and highest use. I don't see the return on investment."

Washtenaw County a hot spot

Saline Township is not the only township in Washtenaw County being eyed for data center development. There are two others currently identified as likely to be built, Washtenaw County Resiliency Officer Beth Gibbons said in a presentation posted to Washtenaw County’s website. Seven additional ones are in negotiations.

The University of Michigan, in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory, plans to build a $1.2 billion “high-performance computational facility” on 144 acres in Ypsilanti Township. Two facilities will be built: one primarily used by Los Alamos and one primarily used by UM.

The site is along the Huron River. UM has said the facility won’t draw from or discharge into the river. Community members started a “Stop the Data Center” campaign, citing concern over impacts to the environment and the university's pressure on the community to get its way.

UM is considering another area for the development, the already industrial American Center for Mobility site. Ypsilanti Township attorney Doug Winters told The News that site is preferred by township officials. Township Supervisor Brenda Strumbo declined to speak to The News and directed a reporter to Winters.

UM did not make a representative of the project available for an interview.

Ypsilanti Township was effectively cut out of the university's conversations with the owners of the land sought, Township Attorney Doug Winters previously told The News. Township officials were not aware of the university’s plans until they were publicly announced last summer.

The university’s Board of Regents approved a request from Chief Financial Officer Geoffrey Chatas to buy 124 acres of land next to 20 acres the university already owned and along the Huron River.

Unlike Saline Township, Ypsilanti Township officials didn’t need to approve the land to be rezoned for industrial use. In the Michigan constitution, universities are treated as part of the state government and have their own regulatory autonomy, so they are generally exempt from zoning laws on land they own. Universities also do not pay property taxes.

“The project is completely unacceptable for environmental reasons,” Winters told The News last month. “The township was also not involved in any negotiations between the railroad that owned the land and UM.”

Winters said that UM officials have said they will consider other sites, like the American Center for Mobility site that's already zoned for industrial use. But he said he doesn’t believe UM will decide to build somewhere else and is trying to placate the township.

“It’s completely unbecoming for one of the best universities in the world to act like that,” he said.

In neighboring Augusta Township in Washtenaw County, the board voted in July to approve a development by Thor Equities affiliate JDS Equities II LLC.

The developers want to rezone 522.2 acres north of Milan-Oakville Road, east of Hitchingham Road, south of Arkona Road, and west of Sanford Road from agricultural and residential to general industrial for a planned data center campus.

The rezoning is part of a larger collection of land parcels that will make up the full campus, with about 300 acres already zoned for industrial use.

Augusta Township officials voted 7-0 to approve the agreement in July, but residents have gathered signatures to put it on the ballot for August 2026, unless a special election is called.

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