I live in Ypsilanti Township. I drive past the Textile Road site on my way to the office almost every day. I have been following this data center fight since it started, and I have decided I am not going to sit this one out and just report the headlines. As someone who has built his career helping people understand this community and put down roots in it, I think I owe you my actual opinion, not just a summary of what happened at the last meeting.
Here it is. I am not against data centers. I do not think that is even a realistic position to hold in 2026. But I am against how the University of Michigan has handled this specific project, and I believe Michigan needs to slow down and do real research before any more of these get built, not just here but statewide.
Start with how this went down. The university notified Ypsilanti Township’s supervisor about a 124 acre land purchase by text message. Not a meeting. Not a formal letter. A text. The township’s own attorney called it consistent with the university’s standard way of treating public officials, in his words, with utter disdain and contempt. That purchase came on top of land the university had already quietly picked up nearby, bringing their total holdings in the area past 140 acres, all before most residents had any real idea of the scale of what was being planned. Because the University of Michigan is a state institution, it does not have to follow local zoning, and it does not pay local property taxes, the way any private developer would. So the community found out about a 1.2 billion dollar project affecting their water, their electric grid, and the Huron River corridor, mostly after the fact.
Now here is the part I cannot look past. Ypsilanti Township is roughly 30 percent Black. Ann Arbor, the university’s own home city, is about 6 percent Black. Statewide, Michigan is around 13 percent Black. So the community absorbing the noise, the water use, and the construction is more than four times as Black as the city where the university itself sits, a city that is currently building its own municipal clean energy utility so it can control its own power future. I will let you draw your own conclusion about why a project like this lands in a township that looks like Ypsilanti Township rather than in Ann Arbor’s own backyard. I have drawn mine.
I want to be fair here, because this is not just a University of Michigan problem. It is a statewide pattern, and the politics around it are revealing.
Mike Rogers, running for U.S. Senate, spent months talking about data centers the way you would expect a pro-business candidate to talk about them. Then reporters revealed he personally holds somewhere between 1.7 and 2.6 million dollars in AI related investments, plus a board seat at a venture capital firm that has backed nearly fifty AI companies. Days, not weeks, after that story broke, he suddenly came out in favor of a statewide data center moratorium. You can decide for yourself whether that is a change of heart or a change in political math.
Abdul El-Sayed, his opponent in that Senate race, has been more consistent. He is calling for a state and local moratorium and has laid out real conditions before he would support any project like this moving forward: all union labor, no increased utility rates for residents, no touching local water supplies, revenue reinvested locally, and a real community benefits agreement. Whatever you think of him politically, that is a specific, honest position, not a reaction to getting caught.
Governor Whitmer has not called for a moratorium. Her approach is a pledge program, asking data center companies to commit that working families will not pay a penny more because of these projects, and that natural resources get protected along the way. She has also said, more or less, that Michigan should build these responsibly rather than see them get built somewhere else in a way that is less smart. I understand that instinct. Michigan has more fresh water than almost anywhere in the country, which is exactly why data centers want to be here, since all that computing power needs something to cool it. That part is not going away, and pretending we can simply say no to every one of these forever is not realistic either.
John James, running for governor on the Republican side, has staked out a position built around transparency and local control by default. His line was that data centers are just one tool for diversifying Michigan’s economy, not the whole plan, and he has called the state’s current approach to all this crazy.
So where does that leave me? I think data centers are coming to Michigan whether any of us like it or not, and our water is exactly why. But inevitable does not mean unconditional. It does not mean a university can text a township supervisor about a nine figure project and call that engagement. It does not mean the community bearing the noise, the water use, and the traffic should look nothing like the community making the decision. And it does not mean we build first and study the consequences later.
My opinion is simple. Slow down. Do the research. Protect the water, protect the rate payers, and be honest with the people who actually live here about what this means for their community before another shovel goes in the ground. I am not going anywhere. I live here, I work here, and I am going to keep watching this one closely and telling you the truth about what I see and learn.
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