A data center campus spanning 180 acres is set to be built in Lyon Township, Michigan.

If the data center – known as Project Flex – is built, it will be located on the east side of Milford Road, south of the Huron Valley Trail crossing and south of New Hudson Drive West. It will consist of six buildings, offering 1.8 million sq ft (170,000 sqm) of floor area, as well as a utility substation.

Although developer Verrus, which is backed by the Alphabet spinoff Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, received conditional approval for the data center’s site plan last September, the proposed campus has not yet acquired the permits and approvals necessary to begin construction.

In particular, an energy audit and a sound study of the project have yet to be fully reviewed.

Details about the project’s capacity are also unclear.

Opposition to the facility has come from residents who are concerned about the potential impact of a data center on utility rates, the environment, and the character of the area, and a private Facebook group created last December titled ‘NO DATA CENTER in Lyon Township’ has amassed around 2,000 members at the time of writing.

At an informational meeting about Project Flex held on January 12, some even called for a temporary moratorium on data center developments in the township.

Data center moratoria are a common tool used by local authorities, some of whom have no experience with any data center developments of any scale. These include councils in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.

Lyon Township is located to the northwest of Detroit. There seem to be no existing data centers in the township, according to Data Center Map.