Twelve-month township moratorium expires in April
On Tuesday, the Lansing Economic Area Partnership said it was considering a data center on a 423-acre site in Delhi Charter Township near Holt. The partnership said weekly public meetings and residential advisory committee gatherings over the coming months, starting with a 6:30 p.m. webinar Tuesday, Oct. 27, would determine whether it advanced the proposal.
Lansing Economic Area Partnership President and CEO Bob Trezise said, “We’re announcing a process today, not a project.” LEAP and Lighthouse said they had not discussed the proposal with local officials, signed non-disclosure agreements, identified an end user or started filing land-use applications. Trezise said the approach was meant to provide the public with information first: “We are literally answering what people have called for, which is for the people to know everything and to know everything first.”
Delhi Township Manager Tracy Miller issued a statement saying local officials knew nothing about the proposal before Tuesday and would not sign non-disclosure agreements. Reaction on Facebook was immediate and mixed: some area residents expressed outrage over the potential development, while others welcomed the potential economic gains of a multibillion-dollar project.
LEAP has worked since 2024 to prepare the land for industrial redevelopment. The site is owned by a holding company associated with rental housing developer DTN Management, and LEAP’s preparation followed a $6.5 million grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.’s Strategic Site Readiness Program. LEAP also has an option to buy the property, which sits just west of U.S. Highway 127 in the unincorporated community of Holt.
Earlier this year, LEAP began partnering with Lighthouse Sustainability, a company that aims to ready properties for sustainable and affordability-focused data center developments. Lighthouse co-founder and CEO Gary Dorris called the proposal “something that could create tremendous value for this community if done right, and we think we’re doing this right by proceeding with engaging the community, listening, and adapting to what they want.”
Project backers target a roughly $10 billion project of up to 1 gigawatt, but Delhi Township officials would have to rezone the 423-acre property for industrial use. The township imposed a 12-month data center moratorium this year that expires in April. Trezise said, “We embrace and welcome that moratorium,” arguing that it provides time for community input on any future land-use application.
Lighthouse is a fairly new company that has not completed a data center. Co-founder and Chief Financial Officer Paul Saferstein said the company has 2 gigawatts of projects in its pipeline. No end user has been identified, he said, but company officials have fielded interest from multiple companies.
Organizers estimated that a data center at the site would boost the local property-tax base by roughly $53 million. Lighthouse committed roughly $20 million more to a community benefits fund. The facility would create roughly 1,000 temporary construction jobs and 100 full-time permanent jobs.
Lighthouse has vowed to power the facility with clean energy, with a portion potentially supplied through an agreement under which Resilience Energy would install, own and maintain solar panels and batteries on participating area homes, then sell the power output to Lighthouse. Officials claim the arrangement could lower participating residents’ energy bills by up to 50%.
Lighthouse co-founder Gary Dorris said the company has been in discussions with Consumers Energy about securing additional power and intends to procure renewable energy to be “100% clean on an annual basis.” Plans also call for on-site battery storage. Officials committed to reducing noise disruption, building a closed-loop cooling system that uses minimal water and paying full freight for the cost of the power.
The early disclosure marks a change from development practices elsewhere in Michigan, where developers have often kept plans secret until ready to submit land-use applications. Residents have argued that they should have more say over large projects that could shape their communities. Bridge Michigan reported that local opposition and other challenges blocked or delayed roughly $130 billion in data center projects nationwide in the first quarter of 2026.
Environmental justice organizer Michelle Martinez told Bridge Michigan during a recent data center panel at Bridge’s Issues Summit that Michigan residents have been “blindsided by the scope, the speed and the lack of channels to have a voice in the decision-making.” The Holt-area proposal remains preliminary, with no end user identified, no land-use application started and public meetings and advisory gatherings set to determine whether LEAP proceeds.