A data center is reportedly being planned in Michigan.
ABC57 and the Herald-Palladium report a $3 billion data center project is being proposed in Benton Township.
An unnamed company is reportedly looking at building an ‘AI data center’ on 280 acres on Yore Avenue near Lake Michigan College. Further details are unavailable at this time.
Located east of Benton Harbor, Benton Charter Township is a charter township in Berrien County, Michigan, located on the east side of Lake Michigan.
"It's unprecedented what this could bring to the area,” Chokwe Pitchford, a Berrien County Commissioner who serves on the National Association of Counties Artificial Intelligence Committee, told ABC.
“We have access to a lot of electricity with the Cook Plant and soon-to-be Palisades coming back online. Water for cooling and there's a lot of space. So these are pretty large projects. So you put that all together, and makes for a pretty attractive site for this industry so I am hoping it will be one of many,” added Michigan State Representative Joey Andrews.
Legislation creating special tax exemptions would reportedly need to pass before the project could move forward. If passed, construction could start next year.
Senate Bills 237 and 238, and companion House Bills 4905 and 4906 are looking to expand sales and use tax exemptions for data centers in Michigan.
The bills would extend the sunset on a use and sales tax exemption through from the current 2035 date to 2050, and establish the same exemption for enterprise data centers.
In 2022, Michigan Democratic Representative Yousef Rabhi tried to introduce two bills that would have eliminated sales and use tax exemptions for data centers. He previously called data center tax exemption bills “corporate cronyism at its finest.”
The federal government recently announced it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to help restart the 800MW Palisades nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan.
Michigan doesn’t have a major data center market. Switch is the most notable player in the state; 365, Bedrock, and Sentinum are also present.
