The monthly meeting in Lyon Township, a small town in southeast Michigan, was packed on a recent Monday, even though the main item on the agenda was an easement for a drain.
Residents, holding notes and water bottles, lined up at the mic to talk about the actual issue on everybody’s minds: the proposed large-scale data center.
They had come prepared.
“Just a reminder,” said a man in a black puffer vest, who identified himself as Larry. “An N.F.L. football field is 57,600 square feet. A 1.8-million-square-foot hyperscale data center is about 32 football fields.”
A motorcyclist asked about the potential effects on traffic. Someone asked if the proper procedure had been followed to preserve a habitat of endangered bats. A woman in a pink shirt played a recording of noise from a data center in another Michigan town.
When a town board member gently interrupted a speaker to say her time was up, she exclaimed, “I haven’t even gotten off my first page!”
Lyon Township voted for Donald J. Trump in 2024, but party loyalties hardly seemed to matter. In an era when Americans are divided on everything — even the cars they drive and the TV shows they watch — data centers seem to have bridged the partisan divide.
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