The vote, the lawsuit, the settlement, the construction
On a date in mid-September 2025, the Saline Township Board of Trustees, in Washtenaw County, Michigan, voted 4 to 1 to deny Related Digital's proposed 1,000-acre data center campus. Township Clerk Kelly Marion, the only member voting yes, was the dissenting vote. The Planning Commission had already recommended denial earlier that month. Resident concerns, in the public meetings leading up to the vote: 575 acres of prime farmland would be rezoned from agricultural to industrial; the campus footprint of 21 million square feet was unprecedented for the township; the water draws and the local-grid impact were unanswered.
Within days, Related Digital filed a lawsuit against the township in Washtenaw County Circuit Court, claiming the township's denial constituted exclusionary zoning -- a Michigan-specific legal doctrine that prevents municipalities from zoning out classes of legitimate industrial use. Township Clerk Marion, in the Fortune piece by Sharon Goldman that broke the timeline publicly: "Everything was drafted and filed with the county within two days of the meeting." The implication: the lawsuit was pre-prepared, ready to file the moment the board said no.
Within a few more weeks, the township and Related Digital reached a settlement. The settlement included roughly $14 million in community benefits -- approximately $4 million earmarked for farmland preservation, additional funding for local projects and fire departments. The denial was effectively reversed. Construction began in November 2025. Project financing closed in April 2026. As of the Fortune publication on May 6, 2026, the campus is being built.
The full sequence took roughly 10 weeks: deny, sue, settle, break ground.
What Michigan's exclusionary-zoning doctrine does
Michigan law contains a long-standing principle, repeatedly affirmed in state appellate decisions, that local zoning ordinances may not totally exclude legitimate industrial uses from a community without a clear and reasonable basis. The doctrine is intended to prevent municipal favoritism and arbitrary land-use decisions. In practice, it functions as a legal shield for industrial developers: if a township board denies an application, the developer can argue that the denial constitutes total exclusion of a legitimate use class and ask a court to compel approval.
The doctrine was not designed for hyperscale data centers. The version of "industrial use" the legislature contemplated when the doctrine was developed in the 20th century did not anticipate 21-million-square-foot single-tenant campuses, 1.4 gigawatt power draws, or 575-acre prime-farmland conversions. The doctrine treats hyperscale data centers and a small machine shop as the same legal category. The result, in the Saline case, is that a township that voted 4-1 against an industrial use was unable to make that vote stick.
Michigan townships considering data-center proposals should assume the developer is prepared to file an exclusionary-zoning suit the moment the board says no. The Saline Township attorney, Fred Lucas, captured the position in one phrase: "Between a rock and a hard place." Approve and you are accountable to your residents; deny and you face years of litigation, attorney's fees, and the prospect of a court-ordered approval anyway.
What the $14 million paid for, and what it did not
The settlement compensation is real. Roughly $14 million flows from Related Digital to Saline Township as a function of the deal. Of that, approximately $4 million is earmarked for farmland preservation -- a meaningful sum in a township where 575 acres of prime farmland is being lost to industrial use. Additional funding goes to local fire departments and other community projects.
What the $14 million did not buy: any reduction in the project's footprint, water use, energy load, traffic profile, or visual impact. The campus is being built at the size and scale Related Digital originally proposed. The settlement is a transfer payment from the project to the community, not a redesign of the project. From the residents' standpoint, the legal outcome is: we voted against this 4 to 1, and we got it anyway, plus a check.
This is structurally identical to the pattern documented in our Pennsylvania Digital I story (Cumberland County, PA): a one-time payment that the developer characterizes as community benefit, separate from the operational footprint of the project itself. In Saline, the payment is bigger and the legal mechanism is different. The structural conclusion is the same: communities receive paper benefits in exchange for permanent, irreversible operational commitments.
The state-level dimension nobody voted on
The Saline Stargate site did not show up by accident. According to the Fortune reporting, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's office actively recruited OpenAI to Michigan as part of a broader state-level economic development effort to attract AI infrastructure investment. By the time the project reached the Saline Township Board, it was operating with state-level political backing that the township had no control over.
This is the asymmetry that makes township-level votes increasingly inadequate as a check on data-center siting. State governments, working through their economic development authorities, are negotiating with hyperscalers and their developer partners about where to put projects worth tens of billions of dollars. The townships that end up hosting the projects are presented with applications that already have state-level commitments behind them, including, in Michigan's case, the legal expectation that exclusionary-zoning doctrine will pull through any local denial.
The consequence is that the meaningful political question -- whether Michigan as a state should be hosting OpenAI Stargate sites at all -- is not being asked at the level where the answer is being made. By the time it reaches the township, the answer is already "yes," and the only remaining question is the size of the settlement check.
What other townships should learn before their first vote
1. Assume the lawsuit is already drafted. Saline Township got 48 hours from board denial to filed complaint. Townships considering data-center proposals should assume the developer's litigation team is staffed and on retainer.
2. The decision-making window is upstream of the vote. By the time the application reaches the planning commission, the legal and political infrastructure to compel approval is already built out. The strategic moments for community influence are during master-plan reviews, comprehensive zoning updates, and during the period when the comprehensive plan is being amended -- not in the public-comment session before the up-or-down vote.
3. A preventive moratorium is a different legal posture than a project-specific denial. A moratorium passed before any developer files an application is harder to challenge under exclusionary-zoning doctrine because there is no specific applicant claiming injury. This is exactly what Bulloch County, Georgia did on May 5, 2026, voting 5-0 to extend a moratorium and 5-0 to direct staff to draft a full prohibition before any project was filed. We have that story on file.
4. The alliance to look for is upstream. Other townships in the same county, the county itself (which may have standing as adjacent landowner -- see our Lackawanna County, PA story on this exact legal angle), and statewide environmental and farmland-protection coalitions are the natural allies. A single township board, alone, with a 4-1 vote, will lose under Michigan exclusionary-zoning doctrine. A coordinated regional posture is harder to litigate.
5. State-level decisions matter more than they look like they matter. Michigan's recruitment of OpenAI made the Saline outcome partially predetermined. Voters who did not want this outcome should hold the state-level officials who recruited it accountable -- not only the township-level officials who lost the legal fight after the fact.
We track Related Digital's Saline campus on the map. If you live in Washtenaw County, or anywhere in Michigan where the next Stargate or related campus may land, send a tip.