Opponents of the data center being pitched for Howell Township are crossing their fingers for a six-month moratorium that will reportedly go before the Howell Township Board on Nov. 10, though there is no agenda posted as of this writing. (You can check here for when the agenda and meeting packet are uploaded by the township.) Opponents are hoping the moratorium will allow the township to craft ordinances they say are needed to protect itself and its taxpayers.
(The meeting is set to begin at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 10, at the township hall, 3525 Byron Road; if attendance is anticipated to exceed capacity, it might be moved to a larger facility, like it was in September.)
The stakes in this project are high.
There is overwhelming negative information about data centers all over the internet — I have spent countless hours reading about data centers, and I have to tell you that it’s difficult to know what to believe. And I am not going to be making any decision on this proposal.
What I do know for certain is that this project is unlike any ever pitched in my 30-plus years of covering Livingston County. I know, too, from all I’ve read, that data centers devour water, electricity, and farmland in the dizzying race against China for world domination of artificial intelligence, which is something few if any of us understand. (I feel anxious and intimidated about the project just by writing that last sentence.)
And it was just six short weeks ago that we learned this $1 billion data center was being pitched for a thousand acres of farmland in Howell Township.
If it comes to fruition, this would be the largest development ever in Livingston County history.
How big is it?
The Ford Wixom plant sits on 320 acres; the property for the proposed data center is 1,077 acres. The data center property would be larger than the entirety of Oak Pointe in Genoa Township, which still ranks as the largest residential/golf development in Livingston County. And the project would immediately become Livingston County’s largest taxpayer, likely generating more tax revenue than the county’s largest taxpayers combined, according to the developers pitching it.
The financial carrot being dangled in front of the community is enormous, all for something so high-tech that few if any of us understand it. Make no mistake, AI is like the Industrial Revolution in that it will completely remake the way we live and work; we are all Alice going through the looking glass.
With stakes so high, some wonder why Howell Township appears to be rushing through the process.
The final approval of the rezoning is scheduled for Dec. 8, which means Howell Township could go from a planning commission denial to a potential board approval in less than three months.
Cory Alchin of Howell, one of the organizers of the group opposing the data center, questions the speed at which the project is moving.
“It took six months for the township to pass a sign ordinance,” Alchin said. “And the township is looking at approving a project of this size in half that time.”
Those pushing back against the data center want the Howell Township Board to take a slow, mindful municipal breath so it can get its ducks — and ordinances — in a row. They’re asking the township to take at least the same amount of time to approve this life- and community-changing project as it did to regulate the size of signs on businesses.
Having the proper ordinances is important, Alchin said, and data center developers are targeting communities that don’t have them in place.
“It will ensure the board and planning commission have time to research, review our current ordinances, and make revisions to protect our community from unregulated data center development,” Alchin said. “Howell Township does not have a definition of data centers.”
The Howell Township site has been identified as one of the prime locations in the U.S. for data centers. It checks all the boxes for size, location, distance from homes, and the availability of water and proximity to high-voltage transmission power lines. If the land is rezoned from agricultural residential to the newly adopted research and technology designation to accommodate the data center proposal, it will include 19 properties in the southwest section of Howell Township that run along Grand River Avenue, bounded by Fleming Road, a bit past Marr Road, a bit past Owosso Road, and Warner Road, and a sliver of land in Handy Township. Those 1,077 acres are roughly equal to about two square miles.
Ryan Van Gilder, spokesperson for the Van Gilder family, which owns the lion’s share of the property, said he believes that out of multiple proposals, they “picked the best data center developer in the world who cares about the community they are in.”
“The conditions that they are offering are protecting the community from any negative outcome,” Van Gilder said. “That’s why we decided to partner with them.”
To read the latest proposal, as well as review the most recent documents on the project, go to the Howell Township website. (First click here, and then click on the red bar along the bottom of the page labeled “Important information from Howell Township.”)
Consider, too, how Howell Township rolled out the project. Outside of doing what it was mandated to by law — notify those who live within a certain distance of the proposed project — the township didn’t do much else to prepare residents for what could be coming. In this case, ignorance is not bliss.
This poor rollout has created an information void, one filled by Facebook groups (which is ironic since this is a Meta data center being pitched, according to a township board member). Opponents cite a lack of transparency on the part of the township as a major concern. The internet is full of data center horror stories, true or not, that fuel online discussions. And the Van Gilder family has sometimes been cast on social media as the villains, despite having done nothing wrong.
“We picked the best company that we thought would support our community,” Van Gilder said. “That part is true. But now the trust/suspicion is so hard to mitigate.”
And then there’s “Deb and Sue’s Excellent Adventure,” in which Deb Drick, chair of the Livingston County Republican Party, and Susan Daus, Howell Township clerk, took a road trip to New Albany, located near Columbus, Ohio, to see how the data centers there have affected the community. (Central Ohio is home to approximately 49 data centers, with three major ones in New Albany: Amazon, Google, and Meta.)
You can check out Drick and Daus’ take on New Albany by clicking here for the local Republican Party’s podcasts. I watched the first one, and their arrival in New Albany rivaled Dorothy’s balloon landing in Oz, when the world flipped from black-and-white to Technicolor. In that first podcast, Drick and Daus found no one with a bad thing to say about the data centers.
Even though the podcast is officially a production of a partisan political party, Drick says her flag is firmly planted on the mountain of data center neutrality; but the same can’t be said for Daus, the Howell Township clerk. Daus made her opinion known through a Facebook post, which has been shared widely:
While Drick doesn’t have a vote on the project, Daus does. Her Facebook post is being used as evidence that she isn’t approaching her upcoming vote on the data center with an open mind.
So, where’s the harm in slowing down the process? What’s wrong in reassuring the community that the biggest development in the history of Livingston County is getting the study and consideration time commensurate with its size and importance?
