Less than a half-hour away from the University of Michigan in Saline Township, OpenAI — parent company of ChatGPT — and tech giant Oracle have plans to develop a $7 billion data center. In an announcement Oct. 30, the companies said the development is set to supply 4.5 gigawatts to Stargate to help advance artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The partnership is one of many data centers rumored to be coming to Michigan, including the controversial partnership between the University and Los Alamos National Laboratory to bring a near 300,000 square-foot data center to Ypsilanti. Since the facility is intended for research purposes and not as infrastructure for website data or cloud storage, the University has requested the Ypsilanti center be referred to as a high-performance computing center instead of a data center. Despite community pushback centered around fears of an inflated cost of living and potential environmental impact, the facility is expected to break ground on approximately 250 acres in early 2026.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated the Saline data center in her Oct. 30 press release, citing the more than 2,500 jobs the facility will generate during construction, along with additional 450 permanent on-site jobs and 1,500 jobs within the community. In addition to being the largest economic project in state history, developer Related Digital will invest $14 million into local fire departments, a farmland preservation trust and a community investment fund, per the request of the Saline Township Board, according to the press release.
Residents and environmentalists have reservations regarding the development.
For an LSA junior who has lived in Saline’s neighboring township of York their entire life, and requested to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution, the lack of transparency regarding the data center is the biggest area of concern. The student will be referred to as Blake in this article. In an interview with The Daily, Blake said they would like to see more information regarding the data center’s functionality and potential environmental impact.
“I do believe this could be done right, but it would have to be done environmentally consciously,” Blake said. “I want more education on things like what a closed-loop system is, what data centers do, how they’re supplied.”
Blake also said they are concerned about how Saline, historically known as a small farm town with a relatively small population, would adjust to the influx of people. They also raised concerns about the potential for an inflated cost of living in Saline, especially within Ann Arbor’s existing issues regarding affordability.
“I worry about if Saline has the infrastructure and housing necessary to support it,” Blake said. “I worry it could lead to disastrously high prices and push the housing bubble even higher. I do know (Ypsilanti) is relatively affordable, but Ann Arbor has become increasingly unaffordable in recent years. I’ve also noticed Saline has evolved along with it to also become unaffordable in some pockets. I’m worried that it would affect that township and the city and then the county as a whole.”
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering senior Param Nayar, who is involved in advocating for sustainability, said the biggest way data centers impact the communities surrounding them is their resource use — namely water and energy.
“(Data centers) need pipes of water that go in around these computing systems and keep them cool, and that water usually becomes steam and escapes into the atmosphere,” Nayar said. “(Energy and water) are both scarce resources, and especially energy is a polluting resource, so it can really impact the environment.”
Many residents near data centers also worry about higher utility bills resulting from the 2.2 million square-foot data center. Michelle Martinez, inaugural director of the Tishman Center for Social Justice and the Environment, told The Daily in the last five years, electricity costs have increased 267% per month in areas close to significant data center activity.
“(There are) examples all over the country where energy prices have ballooned because of (the) data centers increase in energy consumption and the associated infrastructural build-out necessary to support and sustain those consumption levels,” Martinez said.
Related Digital claims residents will not see an impact on their rates and DTE Energy requested that contracts be fast-tracked through an ex-parte process. The process would eliminate the opportunity for a public hearing, which is currently scheduled for Dec. 3. Martinez said she is concerned the ex-parte process would prevent residents from understanding how the data center will affect them directly.
“DTE Energy requested an ex-parte proceeding before the Michigan Public Service Commission, which essentially exempts them from public interface, submitting records that would allow a procedural process for intervention,” Martinez said. “By skipping that part, we actually are disallowed from knowing or substantiating some of the claims that they’ve made in the media that this new OpenAI facility in Saline would be beneficial to rate payers. We just really need a public participation process in which this information can be vetted.”
Blake said she hopes members in and around the Saline community get involved and informed regarding the development.
“I hope this encourages more people to ask the important questions, to be there, to demand more from our local governments to be accountable to the people in a good way, because we want the governments to take care of things for us and to be accountable to us,” Blake said. “But the only way that happens is if we show up.”
Daily Staff Reporter Alexa Cheaney can be reached at acheaney@umich.edu.
