Michigan Chronicle
January 29, 2026
Ebony JJ Curry
Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan used the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Detroit Policy Conference on Thursday held at the Hudson, to put a marker down on one of Michigan’s fastest-growing local fights: where data centers go, who pays for the infrastructure they require, and what protections communities get before a deal is signed.
Sandy K. Baruah, the Chamber’s President and Chief Executive Officer, led a conversation with Duggan during a conference session that also covered Duggan’s record as mayor and his independent run for Michigan governor.
The Chamber endorsed Duggan in the governor’s race in July 2025.
The conversation moved to the question showing up from Washtenaw County to Wayne County and beyond. Residents keep asking local officials the same things at meetings: how much power and water these projects will consume, what that means for bills and infrastructure, what happens when diesel generators run, what 24/7 cooling noise does to neighborhoods, and why the public often finds out late.
Duggan said he believes opposition grows when communities feel blindsided and when the state has not set clear, enforceable rules.
“When I’m governor, I’m going to say, no data center gets considered unless you meet three standards,” Duggan said.
First: the developer covers the full cost of the infrastructure needed to serve the project.
“One, the data company, the developer has to pay 100 percent of the costs,” Duggan said. He said residents’ concerns about higher electric rates are real and should be addressed upfront, not after a project is already moving.
Second: if it threatens our water, it shouldn’t get approved.
“Secondly, it’s got to be done in an environmentally sensitive way,” Duggan said. He talked about cooling approaches that pull from waterways and return warmed water to the environment. Duggan said that should not be accepted as the price of doing business. “We are not going to jeopardize the water and lake system for a data center,” he said.
Third: public consent that can be proven, with residents at the table early and local governments equipped to negotiate.
“The local community has to prove it,” Duggan said, arguing that a project should not be treated as inevitable once the paperwork starts. He said communities should not be left trying to negotiate against global companies with limited legal help.
“You have some of the wealthiest companies in the world coming in and negotiating and you’ve got somebody’s part-time attorney trying to deal with it,” Duggan said. He said Michigan should set statewide standards and send legal teams to support local communities, then let the local community make the final call.
Duggan leaned on a familiar example from his mayoral years to explain what he means by community buy-in: the Amazon distribution facility on the former State Fairgrounds.
He described spending time with nearby residents and negotiating changes based on what they asked for. He said neighbors wanted landscaping so they did not have to stare at a warehouse. He said they pushed for truck routing so traffic would not run through their streets. He said the most consistent ask involved neighborhood parks.
Duggan said he used the land proceeds and project negotiations to deliver parks and address traffic, then said those same neighbors showed up at Detroit City Council and spoke in favor of the project. “So, it got approved,” Duggan said, adding: “2,600 people are working.”
The data center debate is already playing out with that kind of intensity in Southfield, where a major project has been approved and residents spent hours in public comment opposing it.
A 100-megawatt data center is moving forward after the Southfield City Council voted 5–2 in December 2025 to approve a site plan submitted by developer Metrobloks. The plan covers a 109,683-square-foot data center on 12.19 acres of vacant land on Inkster Road between 11 Mile Road and Interstate 696.
The council took nearly six hours of public comment and discussion before voting. Residents who spoke raised concerns about environmental and health impacts, noise, diesel generators, and the strain a 100-megawatt facility places on the region’s power grid. City officials weighed those concerns against the prospect of tax revenue and economic development.
Duggan said when residents become weary when they believe projects are assembled out of sight.
He said residents feel “a lot of anxiety and anger that they’ve been kept in the dark.” He said deals too often get “packed out of a backroom” without meaningful conversations with neighbors, even though the project can reshape a community.
Data centers are being proposed, vetted, or debated across Southeast Michigan and surrounding counties as demand climbs for AI and cloud infrastructure. Proposals named in recent local conversations include projects tied to Saline Township, Lyon Township, Van Buren Township, Allen Park, Howell Township, Augusta Township, and Ypsilanti Township, plus other locations where local officials have considered new rules or pauses to slow the pace of approvals.
The politics of that buildout have sharpened because the costs and impacts are easy for residents to visualize.
These facilities can require massive amounts of electricity, significant cooling systems, and large tracts of land. They tend to bring limited long-term jobs compared with the footprint residents see on paper. When tax abatements or incentives enter the discussion, residents often describe the projects as “extractive,” built for outside demand while local communities carry the disruption.
Duggan’s set of standards at the 2026 Detroit Policy Conference was that the state should stop letting the rules be written one township at a time, after the developer has already chosen the site.
He framed his three standards as a baseline that would force the conversation into the open before a vote, before an agreement, before residents feel outmatched in a process that moves too fast.
The next steps for most of these projects remain local: zoning, site plans, utility coordination, environmental review, and public hearings.
“I think the State of Michigan needs to take the lead and set clear standards on a state level sending legal teams in to support the local communities,” said Duggan. “Let them make their own decisions. There will be communities that would embrace and communities that would want no part.”