One year to the day after the Lyon Township Planning Commission granted conditional site-plan approval for Project Flex, a proposed hyperscale data center, the developer’s CEO said the company remains “here for the long haul” and credited community feedback with helping produce a stronger proposal over the past 12 months.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Livingston Post and Michigan Firsthand, CEO Nelson Abramson described Verrus’ fifth and latest site-plan submission, which could return to the planning commission for final review on Sept. 14, as “awesome” and said it “far exceeds” the township’s requirements. He also said the community reaction surprised him but credited the resulting feedback with helping produce “the best possible project” for the community.
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.
“We’re here for the long haul,” Abramson said. “The proposed project, I think, has gotten a lot stronger as it’s gone forward. We’re here to continue to work in good faith with the supervisors, with the planning commission and with the local community.”
The six-building, 1.8 million-square-foot project encompasses 172 acres east of Milford Road and south of Grand River Avenue. In the accompanying story here (link to come), No Data Center Lyon Township organizers detail their concerns with the project and fault township planning commissioners for quickly granting conditional approval during the first public meeting on the matter.
Abramson, who has worked in the data center industry for nearly 30 years, said large data center projects attracted little public attention for much of his career.
“It was frankly a bit surprising that the conversation got so heated, but I welcome the conversation,” he said. “I do think that the back and forth with the township and with the community has created an opportunity for us to make the project even better.”
Recommitting to the site
Asked whether Verrus would choose the same site today given the public’s reaction, Abramson said it would. “I think it’s a great site, and I was excited about it a year ago, and I’m excited about it today,” he said, citing the property’s industrial zoning classification, the site’s access to utility infrastructure, and the state’s large industrial workforce.
He said online banking, streaming services, and artificial-intelligence platforms depend on physical data centers being close enough to users to respond almost instantly.
“If you want your bank or your chatbot or your streaming service to be responsive, the data center backing it has to be pretty close to you,” Abramson said.
Michigan, he said, sits near several major population centers and is a major market of its own.
“It’s well positioned in the Midwest, close to a bunch of other major markets, as well as being a major market,” Abramson said. “It has a large industrial workforce with lots of experience not necessarily in data centers but in other equivalent kinds of projects.
“People have been thinking about doing large-scale industrial development in Michigan for a long time,” he continued. “That offers a whole bunch of very buildable locations that local communities have already identified – in our case, since the ’50s – as the places they want to put large-scale industrial development. These data centers can’t just go anywhere, and it’s very helpful to be able to pair communities identifying the locations with what we need.”
The combination of these factors, Abramson said, continues to make the state, the township, and the Project Flex property attractive to Verrus.
“All these kinds of things make me incredibly excited about Michigan in general and Lyon Township in particular, and this site in particular,” he said.
Expecting formal feedback
At the time of our interview, Abramson said Verrus had not yet received formal feedback from the township’s outside consultants on the company’s Aug. 13 submission.
“But I’m expecting it very soon,” he said.
Verrus previously raised the possibility of litigation over delays in the review process. Asked whether that position still stands, Abramson said: “We’re here to work in good faith with the supervisors and the planning commission. The feedback that we’ve received from the township and their consultants has actually been a great process, and we’re here to finish the process.”
Addressing water, power and other concerns
Water has emerged as one of the project’s most-contentious issues. Abramson said Verrus designed Project Flex from the beginning with a closed-loop, air-cooled system that would use far less water than a traditionally cooled data center.
Abramson compared the project’s annual water consumption to that of “a handful of Cheesecake Factories.”
“The system itself on a normal day is using basically just house water,” Abramson continued. “And then on a small number of very hot days, we use a misting system.”
Abramson said the air-cooled system would use 95 to 99 percent less water than a traditional evaporatively cooled data center while maintaining energy efficiency through modern chiller technology.
Addressing other concerns point by point, Abramson said Verrus has shifted the proposed route for 120-kilovolt power lines north, away from homes along the southeastern edge of the industrial park. As many as 36 poles could be required, according to project documents. He added that Verrus will install a sound wall and improve rooftop sound baffling to keep the sound at “library level” at the property line.
Additionally, Abramson said Verrus has worked with the Lyon Township Fire Department to adjust the buildings’ parapets and rooflines, making them easier for firefighters to access, and plans to use battery storage as its primary source of backup power instead of traditional diesel generators.
Proposing a $10 million benefits package
Verrus has proposed a $10 million community-benefits package that would provide direct funding to Lyon Township beyond the property taxes and infrastructure improvements associated with the project.
The proposal includes $5 million earmarked for community infrastructure and resiliency, $3 million for education and workforce training and $2 million for public safety. The township, not Verrus, would administer and distribute the money.
Abramson said Verrus developed the funding categories through conversations with community stakeholders and remains “open” to changing the package.
“We’re very much open to additional perspective and feedback from the community and stakeholders as we go through this process,” he said. “In the end, it’ll be direct investment from Verrus into the community – money that will be administered and distributed by the township, not by Verrus.”
Asked what he would say to residents who consider $10 million too little for a multibillion-dollar project, Abramson said the contribution should be considered alongside the project’s jobs, property-tax revenue and off-site infrastructure improvements.
“Well, look, we’re happy to have the conversation,” he said. “In my mind, we have to look at the total package of what’s happening here in terms of jobs, the tax-revenue impact, the off-site improvements that are benefiting the entire community, such as the drain, as well as the direct investment.”
Verrus estimates Project Flex would generate up to $300 million in additional tax revenue over its first 17 years, support 1,500 to 2,000 construction jobs and create 210 permanent jobs.
Asked whether Verrus would commit to giving Lyon Township residents preference in hiring, Abramson said he is “certainly open to it. In general, we’re going to be hiring local people.”
Addressing the broader debate
Asked about the wave of state and local moratoriums on new data center approvals, including Lyon Township’s own six-month extension (which does not apply to Project Flex), Abramson said he supports the process.
“I respect the democratic process and the local communities, whether it’s municipalities, counties or states, thinking about this,” he said. “I actually see it as a tremendous opportunity. We really did found Verrus to answer the questions that people are now asking about data centers, whether it was low water use or noise or energy efficiency or unlocking stranded capacity on the utility grid.”
Abramson said he could not predict whether AI investment might prove to be a bubble but said Verrus moves forward only when demand is “real and solid” and backed by actual customers.
“AI is clearly the demand driver today,” he said. “But it’s only today’s demand driver. And it will be different tomorrow and it’ll be different next year and it’ll be different in 10 years.”
