Data centers in Washtenaw County

OpenAI, Oracle and their developer Related Digital are building a large data center campus called Stargate on 250 acres in Saline Township, southwest of Ann Arbor, with construction underway since June 2026. The campus is expected to draw about 1.4 gigawatts of electricity from DTE Energy and uses closed loop cooling meant to limit daily water use to roughly what an office building uses. Neighbors have raised concerns about construction traffic, wetlands, and air permits, and the Michigan Attorney General is appealing the state's approval of DTE's power contract for the site.

The University of Michigan, partnered with the federal Los Alamos National Laboratory, has purchased 144 acres on Textile Road along the Huron River in Ypsilanti Township for a 1.2 billion dollar computing and data center that would support nuclear research for the Department of War. Because it is a public university project, it is legally exempt from the township's zoning process, so local officials cannot block it the way they could a private developer's plan. Ypsilanti Township and its water utility have each passed moratoriums on supplying new electric infrastructure and water or sewer service to data centers in response.

New York developer Thor Equities sought to build a 1 billion dollar data center near Milan in Augusta Township, southeast of Ann Arbor, and got the township board to conditionally rezone 522 acres in July 2025 over its own planning commission's recommendation to deny. Opponents gathered enough signatures to force a townshipwide referendum, and on August 4, 2026 about 90 percent of voters chose to overturn the rezoning. The project cannot proceed on that land unless it is rezoned again.