Crain’s Says the Backlash Risks Progress. Oversight Isn’t Backlash.

Crain’s Detroit Business published an editorial arguing that the response to the University of Michigan’s planned computing center in Ypsilanti Township risks squandering an opportunity, and that the project has been “incorrectly swept into” a misguided anti-data-center movement.

Here’s what may surprise the editorial board: we agree with more of their piece than they’d guess. Crain’s writes that “some of the scrutiny is justified.” Agreed. They suggest the University “come to the table with something concrete: some sort of community benefits commitment.” That is precisely what we have asked for since day one. And they close by calling on Lansing to build “a statewide framework distinguishing between a 200,000-square-foot federal research facility and a 2.2-million-square-foot commercial data campus.” We not only agree — that framework is already drafted, sitting in committee, and we can give you the bill numbers. But we’ll be more honest with readers than the editorial was: as currently drafted, almost none of it will ever touch this project.

Why the township is using “maneuvers”

Crain’s catalogs the township’s tools — a moratorium, a resolution of opposition — as hardball that will scare off site selectors. What the editorial never mentions is why a township would reach for such blunt instruments: because every normal one was taken away. As a constitutionally autonomous university, U-M needs no site plan approval, no zoning compliance, no local building permits. There was no application to review, no hearing to attend, no conditions to negotiate. Township officials have said they were excluded from the process entirely — the land purchase became known to the supervisor by text message.

When a community’s entire ordinary toolbox is legally inert, what remains looks like “maneuvers.” The way to end crude tools is not to scold the township — it’s to restore ordinary process. Which is what the pending legislation, properly amended, would do.

The truth Crain’s skipped: almost none of it reaches Ypsilanti

We track every one of these bills daily, and we have read each one’s enacting section. Here is the honest scorecard, measured against this specific project:

• The eight-bill House package is mutually tie-barred: no bill in it takes effect unless essentially all eight are enacted. A single committee loss kills the entire package — including HB 6138‘s water protections.
• HB 6139‘s noise review triggers only on a local building permit the University will never pull. HB 6140‘s NDA ban applies only to tax-incentive deals that don’t exist here. HB 6136‘s zoning authority cannot bind a constitutionally autonomous university at all.
• SB 1046‘s water permitting doesn’t take effect until July 2027, applies only above 550,000 gallons per day of consumptive use — a number the University declines to disclose — and its penalties top out at $5,000 against a $1.25 billion project.
• Even HB 6251 and HB 6252 — the standalone disclosure bills, the most passable protections on the board — bind only construction that begins after they take effect.

So when Crain’s endorses “a statewide framework,” understand what that endorsement costs the editorial board: nothing. On the current trajectory, not one law on the table will bind this project before ground breaks. The township’s “maneuvers” are not an alternative to proper process. Right now, they are the only binding process that exists.

Square footage is not the measure of impact

The editorial leans hard on size: 200,000 square feet, “about the size of a Meijer store,” a tenth of the Saline campus. But floor area has never been the concern. The numbers that determine whether a facility is a good neighbor are megawatts of demand, gallons of water per day, and decibels at the property line — and none of those numbers have been publicly disclosed for this project. A Meijer store does not run megawatts of backup generation and a continuous industrial cooling plant beside residential backyards.

If the facility is as modest as Crain’s believes, disclosure costs the University nothing. Two newly introduced bills — HB 6251 and HB 6252 — would require exactly that: an energy and thermal evaluation filed with the Public Service Commission 120 days before construction, with a public summary, using megawatt thresholds that draw precisely the research-facility-versus-hyperscale distinction Crain’s asks Lansing to draw. They are tie-barred to nothing and could pass tomorrow — though as noted above, they only bind construction that begins after they take effect, which makes speed everything.

“The university says” is not a safeguard

Crain’s repeats the University’s assurance that the center “would neither draw from nor discharge into the Huron River or local groundwater.” We’re glad the commitment keeps being repeated. But a statement to a newspaper is not an enforceable obligation. HB 6138 would convert that exact promise into law, with fines of up to $1,000,000 per day enforceable by the Attorney General. If the commitment is sincere, the University should have no objection to being held to it — and its position on that bill will tell the community everything.

Measured against U-M’s own research, this project fails U-M’s own test

Crain’s assures readers the community will benefit — without offering a single enforceable particular. Here is the remarkable part: the University’s own researchers have already written the standard for what a data center owes its host community. In July 2025, U-M’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the Ford School published “What Happens When Data Centers Come to Town?” — research produced independently of this project, on what responsible data center development requires.

Its recommendations:

• Mandatory public reporting of energy use and efficiency
• Energy audits and strict performance standards
• Renewable energy with “additionality” — new clean capacity, not a drain on the existing supply
• Tariff structures that stop grid costs from being shifted onto residential ratepayers
• Emissions standards for backup generation
• Waste-heat reuse
• Protecting local tax revenue for schools.

The report also found that data centers “typically generate few permanent positions relative to the scale of public subsidy they receive.”

Now score this project against its own institution’s checklist:

• Published energy figures: none
• Published water figures: none
• Energy audit or performance commitment: none
• Renewable additionality commitment: none
• Public plan for backup generation emissions or waste-heat reuse: none

And because the University is exempt from local taxation outright, the schools’ position here is worse than under the tax-break deals the report criticizes — there is no revenue to protect. The number of its own researchers’ recommendations this project publicly meets today is zero.

The Ford School’s own announcement of that report carried a warning from the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition about “sacrifice zones forming around the country… right here stateside in River Rouge and Ypsilanti.” When Crain’s insists this project has been “incorrectly swept into” the data center debate, it is arguing with the University of Michigan’s own scholarship.

The reset Crain’s wants already has bill numbers

The editorial asks for a community benefits commitment: HB 6137 makes community benefits agreements a condition of Public Service Commission interconnection approval — the one gate that reaches a project exempt from local permits. It asks for a statewide framework instead of a municipal patchwork: SB 1047‘s utility rate class and the disclosure requirements of HB 6251 and HB 6252 are that framework, thresholds and all. We would add one fix Crain’s should endorse too: severability amendments for the tie-barred House package, so workable protections aren’t held hostage to a single committee vote. But pass them fast — a framework that arrives after the concrete is poured protects the next community, not this one.

We’ll be at the University’s September 9 town hall in Ypsilanti, and again at the October 1st town hall, and we’ll ask the question that settles the size debate in one number: what is the facility’s projected consumptive water use, in gallons per day? We invite the Crain’s editorial board to ask it with us. A project confident in its answer has no reason to withhold it — and a community that has been told “trust us” by an institution exempt from its rules has every reason to ask.

Take action

You can read our analysis of every bill mentioned above — with current statuses, updated daily — on our Legislation page.