Howell Township officials under pressure to approve $1 billion data center: ‘DTE is going to have to pivot’

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The Howell Township board will consider a six-month data center moratorium Thursday in the face of a $1 billion data center proposal that has met with pushback from residents, with hundreds speaking out against the project at a public meeting. 

Township documents shared with Planet Detroit by a community member who’s opposed to the data center illustrate the effort made by project developers, property owners, and DTE Energy to sell township officials and the public on the project. 

The documents raise questions of transparency over officials who signed nondisclosure agreements and spoke with developers for months before notifying the public.

Township officials visited data centers in New Albany, Ohio in September on a bus trip organized by DTE Energy and a Detroit economic development nonprofit. 

The data center, proposed by Randee LLC and Stantec Consulting Michigan Inc., would occupy a 1,077-acre site of largely agricultural land north of I-96, roughly 54 miles from Detroit.

The Howell Township Planning Commission voted not to recommend the rezoning of land for the data center Sept. 23. The Livingston County Planning Commission will consider the issue at its meeting Wednesday.

The data center moratorium before the township board would give the trustees time to study and review whether data centers require local regulation to avoid interference with other land uses and impacts on the environment, public health, and safety.

The board wishes to take an “appropriate regulatory approach” to address potential impacts from data centers while ensuring “the productive and healthy development of data centers” in Howell Township, which could include designated areas for such developments, the proposed ordinance said.

Data centers’ often massive water and energy needs have stoked fears in Michigan communities over how the facilities could imperil water resources, hike residential electric bills, and jeopardize state climate goals. The facilities’ electricity demand risks triggering an “off ramp” provision in the state’s climate law, allowing fossil fuel generation to stay online if there’s a capacity shortage.

Livingston County residents also expressed concern about the risks of building out expensive infrastructure for a data center that could close or relocate.

Data center ‘like winning the Power Ball’

In an email thread with property owner Ryan Van Gilder, Howell Township Assessor and Deputy Supervisor Brent Kilpela compared the data center proposal to hitting the lottery. 

“This project is like winning the Power Ball for the local municipalities. Roads could be paved etc.,” Kilpela told Van Gilder in a Sept. 4 email. It’s contained in hundreds of pages of documents that Breanne Green, a resident of neighboring Marion Township, obtained using the Freedom of Information Act and shared with Planet Detroit. 

Van Gilder’s family owns property within the planned footprint of the data center project.

Green grew up north of Flint and said her resistance to the project is grounded in the hardship Flint experienced when General Motors disinvested from the city in the second half of the 20th century.

“I know what it’s like to live in a town that relies on one employer or one corporation … and then they leave,” she said.

If artificial intelligence, which is primarily driving data center growth, is in a financial bubble that bursts or the technology eventually requires fewer facilities, the loss of tax dollars from the facility could bankrupt the county, Green said.       

Assessor Kilpela told Planet Detroit the data center could increase tax revenue by a factor of six or seven. He also expressed reservations about how the project unfolded.

Meetings on the project began in April, Kilpela said. Kilpela and some other township officials signed nondisclosure agreements related to the project, he said, adding that the agreements ultimately didn’t reveal much. 

Jonathan Hohenstein, the township treasurer and zoning administrator, told Planet Detroit the data center developers didn’t reveal any confidential information through the NDAs, and said they were later rescinded. 

Discussions seemed to fizzle in June and July: Kilpela told Planet Detroit the developers “ghosted” officials before returning in August to try to advance the project.

“I don’t know if that was their intent to try to get it approved quickly,” the assessor said. “That’s what it felt like.”

Stantec spokesperson Trevor Eckart declined to comment when asked about NDAs and other aspects of the project.

‘You guys are dead’: emails reveal high-pressure data center pitch

Howell Township officials came under pressure this fall to quickly advance the data center project, with DTE and other groups working to influence the outcome, the township emails show.

“If your meeting gets postponed on Sept 23 you guys are dead,” Van Gilder, the property owner, said in a Sept. 18 email to Supervisor Mike Coddington, Hohenstein, and Kilpela, stating he was speaking with the “head cheese of DTE” about the township’s upcoming planning meeting.

At the time he sent the message, Van Gilder was on a bus tour of data centers in New Albany, Ohio, which the township emails show was organized by DTE and the Detroit Regional Partnership, an economic development nonprofit. 

“There’s other fish and that right behind us and if we can’t commit to power DTE is going to have to pivot to the next user,” Van Gilder said.

Hohenstein told Planet Detroit the township considered delaying the Sept. 23 meeting over concerns the crowd would be too large to fit in the township hall. The meeting ultimately moved to Howell High School.

DTE spokesperson Jill Wilmot said she cannot speak to Van Gilder’s comments as she does not know with whom he conversed.

“I can tell you that DTE Energy has been engaging with a number of data center developers and local communities to try to understand potential energy usage requirements and educate about how that may be served,” Wilmot said. 

Van Gilder did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

“When we were first approached about a data center, we didn’t take the conversation lightly. Selling a piece of our HOME farm was not something we ever imagined. But as we listened and learned, we came to see this as more than a project. It’s about the future of our community,” the Van Gilder family said in a letter posted to a website about the data center project. 

Township Clerk Susan Daus said she was on the bus tour, and returned on her own to visit New Albany and speak with residents and officials. New Albany officials praised the data centers and their involvement in the community, Daus told Planet Detroit. 

Similar pushes for urgency are being made with other Michigan data center proposals.

Speaking at a Saline City Council meeting last week, Dan Mahoney, director of policy and regional affairs for DTE, expressed a need for fast action on an Oracle and OpenAI data center project in Saline Township, The Saline Post reported.

“Related is on a very tight timeline to construct this project. And if we are unable to meet those schedules, it is likely that Oracle will select a different site in a different state,” Mahoney said.

He made reference to Related Digital, the data center developer in Saline Township, and explained DTE’s request for expedited approval by the Michigan Public Service Commission for the data center’s electric contracts.

In Howell Township, Kilpela said he feels the message relayed by Van Gilder is perhaps a scare tactic, adding that DTE is still trying to move the project forward despite delays.

“I don’t believe any kind of deadline that they’re trying to put on the project at this point,” he said.

‘We’ve never had anything like this here before’

Kilpela was unaware that Stantec — the consulting firm that filed a rezoning application — was involved in the project until the Sept. 23 planning commission meeting, he said. The earlier discussions occurred under the name “Project Splitrock,” he said. 

The identity of  the data center client for the Howell Township development is unknown. The client is a Fortune 100 company, according to the proposal.

A memo from developer Randee LLC submitted for the Sept. 23 planning commission meeting states: “The company will disclose its identity once the development approval process is complete and a final investment decision has been made, typically just before project groundbreaking.” 

Stantec was guarded with information, and vague on how many long-term jobs the project would create, Kilpela said, adding that the short timeline put the township under pressure.

“We’ve never had anything like this here,” he said. “We are still a rural township.”

Randee LLC’s proposal said the data center project would peak at 1,000 construction workers, and “hundreds of employees, vendors, and contractors” would badge into the facility once it is operational.     

NDAs, public notice practices raise transparency questions

The months it took for Howell Township officials to notify residents about the project, public notice practices, and signing of nondisclosure agreements led some residents to criticize the transparency around a project that could transform the community. 

Officials directly notified residents within 300 feet of the proposed data center, the same process the township would use for most other rezonings, said zoning administrator Hohenstein. 

The township placed a public notice in the Livingston Daily on Sept. 8, 15 days before the Sept. 23 meeting.  

Howell Township resident Cory Alchin said many residents learned about the issue on Facebook, with a local data center group growing to over 1,400 members in eight days.

It isn’t enough to simply follow the rules when notifying residents of a project of this size, and officials should have had more foresight and anticipated pushback, Alchin said. He criticized officials’ use of NDAs as undermining transparency and their duty to represent residents rather than business interests.

Brian Connolly, an assistant professor and real estate researcher at the University of Michigan, said the time it took officials to notify residents isn’t necessarily unusual for municipalities.

And townships may not want to deviate from public notice procedures for fear of setting a precedent for future rezoning applications, he added. 

Officials have a political context to consider, the Michigan professor said.

“Assuming township supervisor and board trustees want to retain their seats, then at some point it does seem like transparency around what they’re negotiating is going to be important to them,” he said.

For townships struggling to weigh the risks and benefits of massive data center developments, Connolly said adopting a data center moratorium — like the one Howell Township is considering — could allow for time to develop an ordinance that addresses resident concerns. 

Alchin said he isn’t trying to raise the temperature on what is already a heated debate in the township, he said, adding that officials are in uncharted territory and likely struggling to find the best way to handle the data center proposal.

Still, he said residents have reasons to be frustrated.

“This is not a small endeavor, so people have a right to stand up and be upset because it will change the rural aspect of our community for lifetimes to come.”

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