Van Buren Township just gave preliminary site-plan approval to the “Project Cannoli” data center, which means the project clears a key regulatory bar despite community pushback.
The planners say the proposal meets all legal requirements, so they felt obligated to move it forward, signaling local zoning is effectively friendly to this kind of data center build.
The next big gate is a development agreement between the Township Board and Pattatoni Development, which is where power, water, tax treatment, and community concessions usually get hammered out.
We don’t have public details yet on power capacity, cooling design, or whether this is explicitly GPU-heavy AI infrastructure versus general-purpose colo, so the AI signal here is location and entitlement rather than architecture.
Local resident concerns weren’t enough to block preliminary approval, which suggests political risk is present but not fatal for operators looking at southeast Michigan.
Final Planning Commission approval still depends on how the Board phase plays out, but at this point it’s a live site candidate in the regional data center map.
Worth a click if you track Midwest capacity expansion and want an early read on another potential AI-capable campus site.
Source: Van Buren Township Planning Commission gives preliminary approval to data center proposal | WEMU-FM
