A tech company wants to tear up a parking lot in downtown Lansing and build a data center. And while local residents would normally celebrate getting rid of another ugly, underused parking lot, this one is causing a serious fight at City Hall.
Here’s the deal: UK-based company Deep Green has proposed a 24-megawatt data center in downtown Lansing that would be built on city-owned parking lots near the Stadium District. The $120 million project has an unusual hook: the facility would capture waste heat from its servers and supply it for free to the Lansing Board of Water & Light’s hot-water distribution system, replacing a costly infrastructure upgrade.
Deep Green calls it the first project of its kind in the US. On paper, it may be the most community-friendly data center pitch in Michigan. But even that hasn’t been enough to win everyone over—and a City Council vote is expected next week.
So what? Michigan is at a crossroads. State lawmakers handed out major tax incentives to lure data centers here—and now dozens of projects are racing through local approval processes before communities even have rules in place to evaluate them fairly. What happens at Lansing City Hall—and in township halls across this state in the months ahead—could set the tone for how Michigan handles these types of data center projects for years to come.
Get the full story in this edition of “so what, Michigan?“
