DOWAGIAC, MI – The mayor of a small Michigan town wants an outside technology company to clarify its plans to expand an artificial intelligence data center in his town, saying the company has provided only vague information through press releases.
Last year, Las Vegas-based Hyperscale Data, Inc., announced plans to increase the data center in Dowagiac, located in the southwestern part of Michigan, to end up needing another 340 megawatts of electricity, as much power as 200,000 to 300,000 homes.
Read more: The Las Vegas company says it will expand its Michigan data center. The locals are in the dark
It followed the announcement with an announcement Monday announcing plans to buy more properties to expand its Michigan footprint, without specifying exactly where.
“Both announcements were unclear, and you have not requested or obtained any necessary approvals to proceed with your expansion plans. By doing this, you have created uncertainty and destroyed our trust that you will do the right thing in our community,” wrote Dowagiac Mayor Patrick Bakeman in an open letter to Hyperscale Data CEO Will Horne, released on Wednesday, April 1.
Bakeman, who owns a barber shop and works in Dowagiac, is a first-term mayor who was elected last year, replacing a post that has served for nearly three decades. His town, about an hour from Kalamazoo and 20 miles from the Indiana state line, is home to about 5,700 residents.
While on vacation with his family in Missouri, Bakeman released a two-and-a-half-minute video of himself reading a letter to a tech CEO directly on camera.
“At Dowagiac, we pride ourselves on our ability to create an environment where businesses and neighborhoods can thrive,” he said.
“I can cite many examples throughout Dowagiac where this is happening. Our expectation has always been that your business, like many of the first industries in your property, can live safely and peacefully with the people who live in the homes around your business.”
Hyperscale Data Support purchased a 617,000-square-foot industrial building, the Southwestern Michigan Business Center, in 2021.
It used part of the assets for cryptocurrency mining and now intends to increase data center operations to meet the growing demand for processing power for AI and machine learning, according to its public announcements and regulatory filings.
But city officials said they were caught off guard by Hyperscale Data’s expansion announcements, and received no formal development plans or permit applications from the company to use to answer residents’ questions.
Bakeman called on Hyperscale Data to immediately announce what additional assets it said it was buying.
“That will put an end to the unnecessary assumptions that are prevalent in our society. Even if you happen to have NDAs with the property owner, I hope those agreements can be easily terminated by agreement,” he said.
The city spent several months preparing for a proposal from the company, while leaders spent time and money researching data center issues in collaboration with experts, he said.
Dowagiac also implemented enforceable decibel standards in its noise ordinance, following complaints from residents who live near the data center building.
“We are ready to review your plans to make sure that you are on the way to achieve the full implementation of the control. We expect that you will be able to submit plans within 45 days so that we can solve the problems that continue to be presented because of your many announcements,” Bakeman said.
Requests for comment to Hyperscale Data sent by email and left by phone via what appeared to be an AI chatbot were not immediately returned.
The letter represents the latest point of contention between the Michigan community and data center developers, who have fully embraced Michigan as a potential location for their warehouses full of computer servers in the past year.
At 340 megawatts, the Dowagiac data center expansion will be much smaller than the 1,400-megawatt project for ChatGPT developer OpenAI and cloud computing giant Oracle under construction in Saline Township, south of Ann Arbor, or Google’s proposed data center in Wayne County’s Van Buren Township, which is slated for 00 megawatts.
But it’s still a huge energy use and it can destroy some public services.
Hyperscale Data said it has an “agreement in principle” with an unnamed local utility to meet the power demand. Indiana Michigan Power serves the facility but said Wednesday it does not have any “contracts or commitments” to supply the company with much of the power in question.
Data centers can also require more water for cooling, depending on the applications used, but it’s unclear if that will be the case in Dowagiac.
“We’re willing to listen,” Bakeman said. “However, no proposal has been presented and no decisions have been made. It is your responsibility to present a clear and concise plan.”
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