DUNDEE, Mich. (WTVG) – There is some confusion on the long-term fate of the data center plans in Dundee, Michigan.
Earlier this week, the project took a step back, but many living near the proposed site think it’s very much coming back.
It won’t be a small project. The estimate is about 350 acres for the actual data center, but the developers have an option on a total of 750 acres of land in two townships.
People living next to the farmland off North Ann Arbor Road in Dundee Township don’t see this land as a spot that could one day house a data center that could one day help power all that AI technology that’s been widely imagined.
“Dundee has always been a small farming community, especially this part of town and putting the data center in there could affect our water, it could affect our farm animals that we have. Just our general way of life,” said Hilary Kerr, who lives near the proposed data center.
Kerr and her family actually do raise animals and they’d be across the street and surrounded on one side by the multiple buildings of this data center. Hundreds and hundreds of acres of data center.
“I, along with probably most people of Dundee, have been very upset by the fact that there was kind of an agreement made without the citizens’ knowledge and they had put forward a pre-agreement,” said Kerr.
There was a pre-agreement between the village of Dundee and the developers Cloverleaf for water and sewer. Tuesday, the village shelved that pre-agreement because they got an email from the developers saying they should have done more public communication and listening prior to bringing the project forward. This email does not say the project is completely dead.
“We want to be respectful of the residents. We want to educate them about the truth about data centers. A lot of things and a lot of the concerns we’re going to talk tonight about how they are misconceptions in the industry. So we really want to educate them about the truths about water consumption, about noise, about power rates,” said Aaron Bilyeu of Cloverleaf Infrastructure.
“I don’t think this is the right area for a project like this. There are plenty more industrial areas where this could fit better and I think they have already lost the community’s trust,” said Kerr.
Cloverleaf said it does not have an end user yet for the project, but will talk to major companies like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft.
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This article was published by WTVG on 2025-10-08 18:27:00
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