One year after Lyon Township’s Planning Commission granted conditional site-plan approval for the hyperscale data center known as “Project Flex,” the proposal could return before commissioners this month for a final site-plan decision.
The planning commission is set to meet Sept. 14, six days after the anniversary of its Sept. 8, 2025 vote. Verrus – the developer of the 1.8 million-square-foot data center on 172 acres east of Milford Road and south of Grand River Avenue – submitted its latest plans on Aug. 13 and has asked the township to approve them administratively. If the township determines another planning commission review is required, Verrus has asked that Project Flex be placed on the commission’s Sept. 14 agenda.
UPDATE: Since publication, Lyon Township has stated that the Verrus project will not be on the Sept. 14 planning commission agenda. The agenda for the meeting is not yet available to the public.
At the time of the planning commission’s conditional approval, the project drew little public attention, and it wasn’t until last December when neighbors began to share word of the proposed data center on social media and questioned why the township hadn’t held a formal public hearing.
The public response grew loud quickly, prompting the township on Dec. 11 to issue a press release saying it had “heard questions about a recently proposed data center project” and that no formal public hearing was required because data processing and computer centers are permitted uses in the industrial district where Project Flex would be built. The township said it followed its standard practice of posting the meeting packet on its website, while noting that the applicant, Verrus, still needed to submit updated plans, undergo detailed engineering review and obtain approvals from applicable county and state agencies.
Organizing against Project Flex
That’s when residents began organizing.
Among those who became involved were Craig Kreutzberg and Melisa Noble, two Lyon Township residents who had never met. Kreutzberg learned about the project in mid-December after seeing a post in a neighborhood Facebook group warning that a massive data center could be built across the street from his neighborhood. Noble learned about Project Flex shortly before Christmas from a friend whose property backs up to the proposed development.
What started as neighbors comparing notes quickly grew into No Data Center Lyon Township, a resident-led organization whose members began attending township meetings, filing public-records requests under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act and scrutinizing hundreds of pages of planning, engineering and technical documents.
Kreutzberg and Noble spoke at length about Project Flex with Michigan Firsthand, a YouTube interview program produced in partnership with The Livingston Post. The full conversation is available here. In Part 2, Michigan Firsthand and The Livingston Post speak at length with Verrus CEO Nelson Abramson.
“The effort that has coalesced into this No Data Center Lyon Township group is as nonpartisan as is humanly possible,” Kreutzberg said. “This is absolutely something we need to be laser focused on.”
Questioning the approval process
What troubles Kreutzberg and Noble is that the planning commission granted conditional site-plan approval to a project of this size on Sept. 8, 2025, the first meeting at which commissioners considered it.
“There have been far less serious projects raised before the board that have been given far more serious scrutiny and consideration,” Kreutzberg said. “So it’s very curious why this project wasn’t given the same degree of investigative detail.”
Added Noble: “Had they done their due diligence and asked the correct questions that they were supposed to ask, then it would have been clear to them that this is a much more complex, complicated development than they were being sold on.”
Although the township in its Dec. 11 press release defended its process, Kreutzberg said township officials should have done “more than bare minimum effort” in communicating with the public, and the planning commission should have examined the project in greater detail.
Noble went further, arguing that Project Flex should have required special land-use review, which would have triggered a formal public hearing. Township officials and Verrus have taken a different position, treating data processing and computer centers as permitted uses within the industrial zoning district where Project Flex is proposed.
Scrutinizing noise and fire safety
As residents dug deeper, Lyon Township brought in outside experts to take a closer look at the project.
The township hired K&S Engineers to independently review Verrus’ sound study, and in March the firm concluded that the information provided at that point did not adequately demonstrate that the proposed project would comply with the township’s noise ordinance. In June, K&S also recommended treating several major noise sources as tonal unless Verrus could provide technical evidence showing otherwise.
“It allowed us to finally have proof of what we’ve been saying,” Noble said of the noise review, adding that independent reviews more broadly gave opponents greater confidence that the project would receive scrutiny. “That was a huge moment for us.”
Verrus has since revised its plans and sound analysis, and its latest Aug. 13 submission includes an 18-foot acoustic wall around portions of the project’s substation and additional sound attenuation on rooftop mechanical equipment.
Lyon Township also hired Code Concepts Group, an independent fire-code consultant, which identified issues involving fire-truck access, emergency communications, rooftop access and the large battery-storage systems proposed for the site.
“Is there an evacuation plan?” Noble asked, noting that the project sits near homes and Dolsen Elementary School.
Tracking changes to the plans
Other portions of the project have changed, including the relocation and redesign of a stormwater pond after concerns were raised by Oakland County officials who operate the adjacent Oakland Southwest Airport. Verrus also reduced exterior lighting after the township planning consultant questioned illumination levels.
But perhaps the most visible of the plan changes is the addition of new high-voltage transmission infrastructure, which Noble said did not appear in the plans commissioners reviewed before granting conditional approval. Documents from last fall show a proposed 120-kilovolt overhead transmission line, with a draft showing between 18 and 36 new towers, depending on the final route.
“We’re just learning about these things after the fact,” Noble said. “They’re omitting very critical information.”
In its most recent submission, Verrus shifted the proposed overhead line farther north, away from the southern property line and nearby residents.
Still, for Kreutzberg and Noble, the revisions reinforce their larger argument: that Project Flex is now materially different in several respects from what the commissioners considered a year ago.
Water is also a central focus of No Data Center Lyon Township. Verrus says Project Flex would use a closed-loop cooling system and consume roughly 99% less cooling water than traditional data centers, but Noble said that comparison does not address how much water the project will actually use.
“Just because they are not using as much water as a traditional data center doesn’t mean that they won’t be using a lot of water,” Noble said.
Kreutzberg also pointed to Lyon Township’s history of water-pressure concerns and said residents should not have to wonder whether a project of this scale could place additional strain on public infrastructure. Noble added that the area around the proposed site uses a township well, and some nearby homes, including hers, rely on private wells drawing from the same aquifer.
Weighing the promised benefits
Verrus has made the economic case for Project Flex a central component of its pitch, citing 1,500 to 2,000 construction jobs, 210 permanent jobs, and hundreds of millions of dollars in projected tax revenue over the life of the project.
Noble questions how much of that would ultimately benefit Lyon Township residents, noting the temporary nature of construction jobs and questioning whether the permanent jobs would be filled by people who live in the community.
“Let’s be realistic here,” she said. “A data center doesn’t employ a ton of people.”
Her larger concern is the balance between the benefits that Verrus projects and the risks opponents believe nearby residents may ultimately assume, including possible lower property values; higher electricity costs; potential impacts to water supply, pressure, and neighboring wells; as well as potential public safety concerns.
“The residents are taking all the risk,” Noble said. “And then we offer them tax breaks and tax abatements.”
Verrus earlier this summer proposed a $10 million community-benefits package for Lyon Township, including $5 million for community infrastructure and resiliency, $3 million for education and workforce training, and $2 million for public safety. Still, Noble argues that any financial benefit has to be weighed against potential future effects.
“All while they make billions of dollars or whatever they stand to make on the backs of everyday people who don’t deserve that,” she said. “What’s an actual resident going to see from that?”
Noble and Kreutzberg’s concerns echo criticism Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel raised in a recent Michigan Firsthand interview, when she said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “sold the Legislature a bill of goods” in pushing tax incentives for data centers, and questioned why Michigan should “subsidize” some of the world’s wealthiest companies.
“These new massive hyperscale data centers are certainly very, very new,” Kreutzberg said. “Most people don’t know about them. I know up until last December, I certainly didn’t. So it was probably a very similar situation in that the people who are ultimately responsible for making the decisions didn’t have the right information, didn’t think that they needed to proactively seek out some additional information, and were making ill-informed decisions based on what little information they were probably given.”
Noble was more blunt.
“It’s the Wild West out here,” she said. “There’s no appropriate regulations on any of this right now.”
Noble said she is not opposed to responsible development of data centers, but is opposed to Project Flex. “I think it is clear that a development of this intensity does not belong in a community’s downtown district and next to an elementary school, two daycares, and literally in the backyards of homes.”
She added: “A hyperscale data center in 2025 when they submitted the application is not the same thing as a data center in 1992,” she said. “And we should have the legal authority to be able to push back against that.”
Preparing for the next fight
In early August, the Lyon Township Board of Trustees voted to extend the township’s moratorium, enacted last March, on new data center applications for another six months, giving officials additional time to work on stronger regulations. The moratorium does not apply to Project Flex.
“They’ve actually done quite a bit of work and they’ve taken a lot of public input, which I do appreciate,” Noble said. “I don’t necessarily think that we’re quite there.”
If the Planning Commission ultimately grants final site-plan approval on Sept. 14, Noble said No Data Center Lyon Township is prepared to challenge the decision before the township’s Zoning Board of Appeals.
“I think we have a strong enough argument,” she said.
At the same time, Verrus has also warned that continued delays or denials could lead to litigation.
But that hasn’t changed Noble’s position: “We’ve had multiple residents say in public comment, ‘Sue us,’” she said.
