Plans to develop a site for a data center in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, have been dropped after residents objected to the scheme.

Cloverleaf Infrastructure had been seeking to turn farmland outside the town of Carlton into a site ready to host a data center, but has decided not to pursue the scheme.

It informed town officials of its decision late last year, and the news was confirmed this week.

In comments reported by Wisconsin Watch, Cloverleaf’s chief development officer, Aaron Bilyeu, said: “The town chairperson said, ‘I don’t support data centers. I don’t think this is a good fit’. We shook hands and said ‘thank you’.”

It had previously been reported that residents of Carlton had concerns about farmland being lost to data center developments.

Carlton is home to the Kewaunee Power Station, a shuttered nuclear plant that could be brought back online under plans announced last year. Data centers have been cited as a potential end user for energy produced at the plant, given the spate of deals between digital infrastructure and nuclear power companies that have been struck in the last two years.

Founded in February 2024 amidst the AI boom, Cloverleaf Infrastructure is a powered land provider that buys land for data center companies and works with utilities to upgrade the necessary power infrastructure.

The project is the second in Wisconsin that Cloverleaf has walked away from in recent months. It had hoped to develop a site near the village of Greenleaf, but said in January it would not be pursuing the scheme.

Elsewhere, the company is backing projects in Georgia and Michigan.