Michigan's largest data center is going vertical in Saline Township, and more sites are working through local approvals. Here is where the Michigan projects stand as of late September 2026, with sources, and what these sites buy on the electrical and mechanical side.
The Barn, Saline Township (Washtenaw County)
Related Digital is building The Barn for Oracle and OpenAI on a 250 acre site along Michigan Avenue. The campus is three single story data center buildings of 550,000 square feet each, plus warehouses and electrical substations, at about 1.4 gigawatts. Walbridge is the builder.
- Financing closed in April 2026, and the formal groundbreaking was June 1 (Related Digital).
- Workers passed 1 million work hours at the end of August. By mid September, two of the three buildings were framed and partly roofed (MLive, Sept. 19, 2026).
- DTE supplies the power from existing resources plus a new battery storage installation paid for by the project. The buildings use a closed loop, air cooled system (Related Digital).
- Saline Township posts construction notes, including substation, generator and dewatering updates, on its data center update page.
Other Michigan sites to watch
Augusta Township voters rejected a rezoning of 522 acres for a proposed Thor Equities data center on August 4, with 89.5% voting no in unofficial results, so the land stays agricultural residential (MLive, Aug. 4, 2026). Several townships are also writing rules for what they call high resource demand facilities: data centers, battery storage, substations and switchyards (The Sun Times News).
In July, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and Verrus signed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's Michigan Affordability and Responsible Growth Pledge. The companies committed to cover grid costs tied to their projects, protect water and hire Michigan workers (The Sun Times News).
What a data center campus buys on the electrical and mechanical side
The buildings are only part of the job. Every campus also needs substations and medium voltage distribution, switchgear and power rooms, battery storage, a cooling plant with pumps and fans, generators, and the controls that tie it together. For contractors, panel builders and OEMs working these jobs, that means:
- Liquid-filled padmount and substation transformers, dry type transformers and line reactors.
- Power distribution blocks, fuse holders and surge protection inside PDUs, RPPs and power skids.
- Motors and drives for chilled water pumps, cooling tower fans and air handlers.
- Enclosures and enclosure cooling for outdoor controls, plus cable tray, cable glands and VFD cable.
Our data center component map shows where each line we represent fits. If your shop is quoting work on a Michigan, Indiana or Ohio data center, send the drawing or the part list and we will cross it and quote it.
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Applied Control is a manufacturers' representative for Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Project facts above come from the linked public sources as of September 27, 2026. Applied Control is not affiliated with the projects or companies named.