A local resident is trying to reopen a settled lawsuit to halt the “Stargate” data center in Saline Township, targeting the township’s rezoning reversal that enabled the project.
She argues the consent judgment that greenlit the 575-acre site violated Michigan’s Open Meetings Act and cut her out of a zoning process that affects her property, farmland lease, and quality of life.
Related Digital and the landowners call her motion frivolous and late, emphasizing that the township approved the settlement in a public meeting and that record-keeping errors don’t invalidate the vote.
Behind the legal fight sits a 1.4-gigawatt data center with special DTE power contracts, terminated farmland tax status, and billions in financing contingent on avoiding delays.
For AI infrastructure, this is another case where local governance, procedural transparency, and community impact can materially threaten hyperscale build timelines and capital deployment.
The hearing will test how much leverage individual residents have over GPU-scale data center siting in power-constrained regions.
Worth reading in full for how zoning process minutiae and meeting records can become a real risk vector for large AI data center projects.
Source: Resident near OpenAI, Oracle data center project looks to upend settlement – mlive.com
