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Across the United States, the fight over data center construction has largely pitted stamp-happy municipal governments against their own residents. As these battles multiply, local officials are increasingly pressured to approve projects their constituents oppose, while more and more voters take their struggles to the ballot box.
Residents in Saline Township, Michigan, however, thought they had avoided the drama after their township board and planning commission both voted to decline a 21 million square foot data center in their backyard. It was exactly what Saline’s 2,883-some residents wanted. Unfortunately for them, the data center developer soon sued the tiny township, Fortune reported, which was ultimately bullied into accepting the $16 billion development.
Back in September, Saline’s planning commission rejected the request to rezone 575 acres of farmland for the data center, proposed by the company Related Digital, a subsidiary of a real estate conglomerate owned by billionaire Steven Roth (who’s been in the news lately for other reasons.)
Two days later, Related Digital filed suit, alleging the township had practice “exclusionary zoning.” The local officials were up against the wall: a lengthy legal battle risked depleting the township’s coffers, and even if they won in court — an unlikely proposition — Related Digital could have forced the data center anyway by partnering with the University of Michigan, which can bypass local zoning laws.
The township soon settled, signing an agreement allowing the project to proceed. Later in October, it was revealed that the data center would be primarily leased to Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, as part of Donald Trump’s $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative, dubbed “Stargate.”
“I’m not sure there were any good solutions,” Fred Lucas, the township’s attorney told Fortune. “If you polled everyone on the township board, they would have said the same thing: they didn’t want a data center there. We didn’t invite them, we didn’t encourage them.”
The legal strong-arming in Saline exposes a fundamental contradiction in America’s AI infrastructure boom: it’s being imposed from above by tech billionaires and their political allies, not chosen by the communities forced to live with it. Town after town has been compelled to absorb the environmental and social costs of an industry obsessed with expansion — making it clear that when capital and democracy collide, capital wins.
Kathryn Haushalter, a local mother who lives near the data center site told Fortune that “it feels like I’m playing by a different rule book. Like I’m playing baseball and they’re playing football.”
More on data centers: You’ll Never Guess Trade Unions’ Position on AI Data Centers
