Southfield City Council approves controversial data center plan
Posted By: Detroit Free Press on December 16, 2025. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
Southfield City Council has approved a developer’s controversial plan to build a $1.5 billion data center just south of Interstate 696 and the Farmington Hills line.
Council members voted 5-2 late Monday night, Dec. 15, to approve a site plan for the two-story facility over objections from more than two dozen residents who spoke against the project during the hourslong council meeting.
Council President Charles Hicks and Councilwoman Ashanti Bland were the two nay votes.
No resident at the meeting voiced support for the data center. The most commonly cited gripes concerned the facility’s electricity usage, its demand on the power grid and worries that it could induce higher electric rates. There also were concerns about pollution and noise.
Proposed by California-based developer Metrobloks, the data center would span some 217,030 square feet, use 100 megawatts of electric power and occupy 12.9 acres of a mostly vacant site along Inkster Road north of 11 Mile.
The data center would employ a closed-loop water system, which would require significantly less water than bigger “hyperscale” data centers. The facility is expected to create 35 full-time jobs and 150 to 200 construction jobs.
A Metrobloks representative, Jeff Mandel, tried to allay each concern brought up at the meeting. He did concede that Metrobloks is a relatively new company and has yet to build a data center — a circumstance that worried the council president.
“We’re not asking the ratepayers to subsidize us,” Mandel said. “We are using more electricity to use less water, and we’re paying for that electricity.”
Following council’s vote, which took place shortly after 11:30 p.m., Mandel told the Free Press that they hope to begin construction of the data center once DTE is able to “deliver the power,” which he said could happen in 2027 or 2028.
“There’s a lot of work to do before then,” he said.
Mandel declined to identify the data center’s potential tenant or tenants, saying that information is confidential.
William Greene, 48, was among the chorus of residents who criticized the project during the meeting’s public comments period.
“I don’t really see this as being a good thing to add another data center,” he said. “It’s not as big as the other ones, but it’s big enough. One hundred megawatts — that powers a lot of homes and that sucks up a lot of energy, and our infrastructure is not ready for that, and just to only produce 35 jobs.”
Greene added, “DTE and these data centers are the only ones who are going to benefit from this. I don’t see where we’re really going to benefit that much to put that strain on our city like that.”
One Farmington Hills resident voiced his opposition. Clark Sanford said that he lives within walking distance of the data center location and worries about potential water pollution on his and his neighbors’ properties.
“A lot of folks stand against it,” he said.
Councilwoman Coretta Houge voted in favor of the site plan. Even though the project had few vocal supporters in the audience, she said she received emails and phone calls from residents who are in favor of it.
“We have to consider new ideas, new technologies, because that’s just the way the world is going,” she said.
Data center projects have lately been popping up across Michigan and often draw scrutiny because of their electricity and water needs.
One of the largest data centers proposed to date is for Saline Township south of Ann Arbor. That project would be developed by an affiliate of New York-based Related Companies for Oracle and OpenAI as part of the “Stargate” artificial intelligence development project.
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