- As data center developers float plans in more than a dozen Michigan communities, pushback against the facilities is growing
- At least 19 communities have passed or proposed moratoriums on data center development, while bipartisan lawmakers push state-level reforms and gubernatorial candidates chime in on the debate
- Supporters tout the potential jobs and investment, while opponents fear pollution and energy rate hikes
Had anyone asked him a year ago, Tim Boal could barely have described what a data center is.
Then, lured to Michigan by newly passed tax breaks, industry representatives came knocking on Howell Township’s door. Boal, who sits on the township board and planning commission, found his life consumed with the question of whether to let them in.
After six years in local government, he’s dealt with his fair share of hot-button issues. But the backlash to the proposed rezoning of 1,000 acres for a $1 billion hyperscale computing facility, he said, was something “I’ve never seen before.”
In the end, Boal and his fellow township board members joined at least 18 other local governments around Michigan in voting or proposing to temporarily halt new data centers while they rush to set limits on where, when and how the facilities can operate.
Those actions come amid a wave of packed local meetings where residents have expressed fear of lost farmland, polluted air and water, concerns about the risks of AI or that Michiganders could end up on the hook for the big-dollar facilities if the artificial intelligence boom goes bust.
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Beneath it all simmers a resentment that lawmakers, eager for taxes and jobs amid a multi-trillion-dollar global AI boom, have promised tax breaks to some of the world’s richest corporations while Michigan residents feel the financial pinch.
More than 130 Bridge Michigan readers named data centers as a top issue they’d like to see 2026 candidates address in Bridge Listens, an ongoing, unscientific survey.
“It’s cutting across all political, socioeconomic and cultural lines,” said Marjorie Steele, executive director of the Michigan Economic Development Responsibility Alliance, which opposes data center expansion. “These data centers are being opposed in every community where they are proposed, including communities which are heavily industrialized already, which are rural agricultural, which are heavily Republican, heavily Democrat, wealthy, poor, and everywhere in between.”
A representative for the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, touted data centers as “essential digital infrastructure” that fuels everything from online shopping to virtual schooling and doctors’ appointments while infusing host communities with tax revenue.
“The data center industry will continue to work with residents, communities and policymakers to enable the continued responsible development of this critical industry, said Dan Diorio, the group’s vice president of state policy.
Meanwhile, a politically diverse coalition is calling for a statewide moratorium and an end to the tax breaks that have lured Big Tech to Michigan. Seizing on the backlash, some candidates for statewide office are making data center skepticism a central theme of their campaigns.
Still unclear is whether the resistance will have any lasting effect on the industry’s planned expansion into Michigan and how far local governments can go in their efforts to slow or block data center development without running afoul of laws prohibiting exclusionary zoning.
The push and the pushback
Late in 2024, state lawmakers narrowly approved tax breaks to lure the industry to the state.
If developers invest at least $250 million, employ 30 people and meet some other requirements, they pay nothing in state sales and use taxes through at least 2050 — a savings that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per facility.
Within months, Shanna Draheim and her team at the Michigan Municipal League started receiving calls from local officials in communities that had attracted the industry’s interest.
Like the solar arrays and megasites that have also sparked controversy in Michigan, data centers take up lots of space, which means they are often sited on farmland.
It’s not a land use most rural communities had ever contemplated before, said Draheim, the MML’s policy director. Small-town officials may have set aside land and crafted regulations for industrial development, but, until recently, they had no reason to assume their community would attract much more than small factories and warehouses.
Now, Draheim said, “you have these huge, global entities with a lot of money and financial people and legal professionals coming in.”
The facilities they’re seeking occupy hundreds of acres at a time, with energy demands rivaling that of a major city.
“They’ve never dealt with stuff like this before,” Draheim said. “One of the things we’ve just been saying is … it’s OK to pump the brakes and figure out what questions you have.”
Fast-forward a few months, and communities from Saginaw to the outskirts of Muskegon have paused data center approvals for anywhere from three months to a year, according to a Bridge Michigan tally.
Some, such as Howell Township, have done so in reaction to active development proposals. For others, it’s a preemptive measure based on the belief that Big Tech could set sights on their town next.
“We clearly can’t stop them, but we can control them in a way that they’re not going to be proposed in an area that will undermine a community,” said Amanda Nimke, supervisor of Sylvan Township, near Chelsea, which just passed a six-month moratorium.
In Mason, which also recently pressed pause on data centers, Mayor Russell Whipple doesn’t necessarily see the facilities as a bad thing. Growth has long been a goal for cities like his — business taxes, after all, help fund public infrastructure and services.
“I don’t see them as the boogeyman,” Whipple said. “I see the potential for a transformational impact to the city’s revenue stream.”
Steele, of the Michigan Economic Development Responsibility Alliance, sees things differently.
She got her start protesting the now-dead Gotion electric vehicle battery plant proposal outside Big Rapids and other large factories and solar farms on rural land. That experience convinced opponents that promised jobs and investment from development projects may not be worth the tradeoffs, she said.
“Frankly,” she added, “it’s also set the model for fighting back.”
Her group is part of a growing, loosely affiliated coalition of environmental groups, utility ratepayer advocates and economic development watchdogs pushing back against data center proposals across the state.
While the list of moratoriums keep growing, communities that wish not to host data centers face a delicate balance, said Kathryn Stegink, a Grand Rapids attorney with the firm Mika Myers.
Local governments are free to set standards that protect public health, safety and general welfare while potentially making their community unappealing to developers — for instance, placing limits on noise, building height, allowable acreage or the glare of nighttime lights.
“But at the same time, they have to be careful about making sure that they don’t cross into the world of exclusionary zoning,” Stegink said.
State law prohibits local governments from banning land uses for which there is a demonstrated local need. It’s not yet clear whether data centers fall into that category, said Michael Homier, a municipal attorney with Foster Swift Collins & Smith.
“Is data center a demonstrated need, or are we just getting these facilities because of tax breaks that have made it more attractive to locate in Michigan?” he said.
In Ypsilanti Township, local officials have few options but to symbolically oppose a proposed University of Michigan-Los Alamos National Laboratory data center on 124 wooded acres between the Huron River and a Ford Motor Co. plant.
The township board and many local residents have come out against the proposal, a portion of which would be used for nuclear weapons research.
As a public university, U-M is exempt from the zoning laws that would otherwise require developers to get local approval for the project. So township officials have launched a public relations campaign, calling on residents to contact their state officials to voice objections.
“The power of the people banding together … is our best option,” township Supervisor Brenda Stumbo told residents who gathered at a Wednesday meeting to discuss the project.
A political landmine
While local communities ponder their options, a growing chorus of lawmakers and advocates are pushing to rein in data center development — and receiving mixed reactions from the state’s top political leaders.
State Reps. Jim DeSana, R-Carleton, Dylan Wegela, D-Garden City, and and Erin Byrnes, D-Dearborn, are sponsoring legislation to overturn the data center tax breaks, while a trio of Democratic senators has introduced a package to place guardrails on the industry’s water and energy use.
A host of advocacy groups have called for a statewide moratorium and state Rep. Jennifer Wortz, R-Quincy, has said she will introduce legislation to propose one.
Other bills would ban local officials from signing non-disclosure agreements related to prospective data center developments and block a $100 million state grant awarded in 2024 to facilitate the proposed U-M-Los Alamos data center in Ypsilanti Township.
At least some of those efforts seem like longshots — both state House Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, have said they don’t support a statewide moratorium.
“I think we need the data centers,” Hall said, but only with local input and confidence that they won’t raise energy rates.
Whitmer spokesperson Stacey LaRouche was more unequivocal:
“Any legislation that prevents us from growing the economy and creating jobs is an automatic non-starter and would be vetoed,” she said.
With Michigan set to elect a new governor this fall, the state’s leading candidates to replace Whitmer clearly see data centers as a key campaign issue.
Gubernatorial candidates Democrat Jocelyn Benson, independent Mike Duggan and Republican John James have chimed in on the debate.
- Benson, whose husband, Ryan Friedrichs, is a vice president for Related Digital, the company behind Michigan’s first data center project, has vowed to ban data centers that use state water and raise electricity costs. Her husband has vowed to recuse himself from any state work if she’s elected.
- Duggan has called for a statewide siting standard for data centers, arguing the facilities are an important economic development tool but that Michigan must require sustainable water management, ensure data centers pay for their own power and address negative impacts on local communities.
- James has called the state’s current approach to data centers “crazy” and advocated for greater transparency and local control over data center deals, along with efforts to build on blighted industrial sites rather than farmland.
Tom Leonard, a candidate in the Republican primary, has gone so far as to make data center discontent a central theme of his campaign, traveling to city and township meetings across the state to voice his objection to the facilities and the solar arrays that he fears will be built to power them.
Leonard told a Bridge reporter the big crowds at those meetings prove voters are sick of big businesses and politicians telling them to “sit down, shut up and let us do what we’re going to do.
“Lansing and Big Tech has met its match,” he said. “Anybody on the ballot in 2026 better take note of this issue, because people are fed up.”
What does it all mean for data center development?
Short construction timelines are important to tech companies as they compete to corner the market and call dibs on Michigan’s limited available electrical grid capacity. That makes them prone to aborting proposals when public resistance slows them down.
“We look for communities that want us,” said Steve DelBianco, president and CEO of the tech industry group NetChoice. “If we have a community that has open arms, good land, plenty of power, we will build there.”
Data center developers have already rescinded or paused plans in several Michigan communities amid pushback from residents. Nationally, some $64 billion in data center projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition, according to the group Data Center Watch.
That includes in Howell Township, where Boal and his colleagues recently voted to pause data center approvals. Shortly after the township board enacted the moratorium, officials behind the proposed facility withdrew their proposal.
“We believe the right thing to do now is to honor the current moratorium, which will give the Township and its residents the time needed to develop thoughtful, well-considered regulations for any future data centers,” they wrote in a public statement.
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