Pere Marquette Township Freezes Data Centers for One Year

Pere Marquette Township adopted a one-year data center moratorium on Aug. 11, with nobody at the lectern and no project on the books. The Lake Michigan township that surrounds Ludington, Mich., voted in Ordinances 162 and 163 after a first reading on July 14, freezing permits, siting, and construction while it writes rules its zoning code never had.

Trustee Megan Tresnak told the board the pause can be extended by resolution, and it can end early if the township finishes data-center rules before the year is up.

Two Ordinances and an Empty Hearing

The Ludington Daily News reported that Ordinance 162 creates the temporary freeze and Ordinance 163 amends the zoning code so staff can actually carry it out. Township officials said the code does not define data centers, and they named water use, power demand, noise, design, size, location, and operations as the gaps they want to study.

Ordinance 162 stops all of the following for one year:

• Permits: No permitting of data-center facilities.
• Review: No consideration or approval of those facilities.
• Siting: No location decisions while the pause holds.
• Build-out: No construction or installation of the plants.

The freeze stays in force unless the township adopts governing rules sooner. If the board later extends it, a landowner may ask for a waiver by showing immediate and irreparable harm, and that request would go to the Township Board at a public hearing. During comment on Aug. 11, no one spoke for the ordinances and no one spoke against them. The board adopted both that night.

No Developer Had Even Knocked

This was not a last-minute block of a live campus. In July 14 coverage, the Ludington Daily News reported that Township Supervisor Kelly Smith described the plan as a planning step, not a reply to any proposed development. An Aug. 10 follow-up said officials had not been approached by a developer and that no data center had been proposed inside the township.

That empty docket is the point of the copycat wave on this shore. Boards are no longer waiting for a site plan to learn that their zoning text has no word for a hyperscale hall. They are closing the counter first, then trying to write the missing standards while the clock runs.

Ludington Daily News reporting in early August also asked whether western Michigan’s electric system could even feed one of these plants. Mason County sits far from the southeast Michigan fights that already have dirt moving, and the board still treated the gap in its code as urgent enough to legislate before anyone filed.

The Same Pause Spreads up the Lakeshore

Pere Marquette did not invent this move. In Manistee County, a short drive north, three townships used the same tool this year, two of them with no formal application on the table.

Manistee Township’s board voted unanimously three days after Pere Marquette and adopted Ordinance 2026-01. The draft findings said approval of data centers “may result in or produce negative impacts on permitted land uses and development and may harm the public health, safety and general welfare,” language that tracks the same health-and-welfare frame used down the shore.

Stronach was the noisy exception. More than 225 people packed a May 12 planning meeting after Tondu Corp. president Joe Tondu discussed a possible data center on 150 acres he owns on Stronach Road. Supervisor Phil Vadeboncoeur later said the township wanted “to get our ducks in a row” before anything like that could even be considered, and the board set the pause to expire on Dec. 31. Filer’s board voted 6-0 on June 2 after residents thanked members for drafting the ordinance; Trustee Dean Kruse was absent.

Michigan Holds 64 of the Nation’s Local Freezes

Michigan became a target for AI halls because of cool weather, Great Lakes water, and a state sales tax exemption for data centers that lawmakers approved in 2024. The Gander, cited by Michigan Public, counted at least 30 AI-related projects built or in the works. Local governments answered with pauses, not welcome mats.

THE PAUSE MAP IN AUGUST

• Michigan communities: Michigan Public counted at least 52 municipalities with data-center moratoriums on June 29, most written for six months to a year.
• Land off the table: An April 28 MLive tally of 51 cities and townships put nearly 1,500 square miles off-limits, an area it compared to Rhode Island, and called that count an undercount.
• National pile-up: The Moratorium Nation tracker, refreshed Aug. 19, lists 533 local moratorium instruments across 42 states, with 429 still in force and Michigan first at 64, ahead of Ohio’s 53.
• 2026 spike: The same tracker logged 7 data-center moratoria in 2023, 6 in 2024, 59 in 2025, and 294 in the first seven months of 2026, with 80 in June alone.

Sarah Mills, a planning professor and director of the University of Michigan’s Center for EmPowering Communities, told MLive that townships and cities are “all kind of grappling with this at the same time.” She also noted Michigan has more than 1,300 jurisdictions with zoning power, so a freeze in Ludington does not close the state. The clustering still matters for anyone trying to land a lakeshore site, because the towns that look cheap, wet, and cool are the ones copying each other’s ordinances.

Lansing has not unified the map. House Bills 5594-5596 would stop local site plans and EGLE permits, and would bar a person from starting data-center operations, through April 1, 2027. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s spokesperson Stacey LaRouche told Bridge Michigan-era coverage, relayed by MLive, that “any legislation that prevents us from growing the economy and creating jobs is an automatic non-starter and would be vetoed.” In April, Whitmer put it more bluntly at a Pancakes and Politics forum: “Data centers are going to be built.”

Why Townships Cannot Simply Ban Data Centers

Residents keep asking boards to forbid the use outright. Catherine Mullhaupt, director of member information services at the Michigan Townships Association, told Michigan Public that officials are “normal folks” who start with the idea of “can’t we just say no?”

They generally cannot. Under Michigan’s rule against exclusionary zoning, a local government may not wipe out a land use if the land exists and there is a “demonstrated need” for it. Mullhaupt said moratoriums have long been the lawful pause for a new use, the way townships once handled early wind turbines. Michael Selden of the same association told MLive that after a full review a township might still argue a data center cannot work inside its borders, but that fight would be fact-heavy and easy to take to court.

Michael D. Homier, a municipal lawyer who advises Michigan towns on these files, told Michigan Public that if a zoning ordinance “doesn’t touch on the regulatory aspect of these emerging land uses,” officials owe residents new rules that blunt the harm. He said tech firms like cheap rural land, and that “locating hyperscale data centers in the middle of rural Michigan doesn’t seem to be a wise idea to me.” Christopher Patterson, another lawyer who helps towns write the follow-on codes, said six months to a year can be a “pretty tight timeline” once a master plan and ordinance text both have to move, even if case law still treats that length as defensible.

Genoa Township showed how tight it is. On Aug. 18, six days after Pere Marquette voted, its board added six more months because a drafted noise rule was not yet airtight enough to defend. Township Manager Kelly VanMarter said the extra time was for a noise study and an ordinance “we know is defensible.” University of Michigan planners have even published a data center guidebook for local governments because so many codes still describe the small server rooms of the early internet, not 2-million-square-foot halls.

A Moratorium Tells Capital to Look Elsewhere

For hosting firms and the hyperscalers that feed them, the legal distinction between a pause and a ban is thinner than the ordinance text. Brad Tietz, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, told MLive what site-selection teams hear when a township clerk posts a freeze.

If you have a moratorium in place, it is a signal to the industry that this might not be the best place to make a multibillion-dollar investment. Capital is being deployed as we speak, and investment decisions are being made every day. So obviously, the longer these moratoriums are in place, the less chance these communities have to attract this investment.

Brad Tietz, director of state policy, Data Center Coalition, to MLive

Marjorie Steele, founder of the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance of Michigan, told MLive the opposite story from the same facts: she already saw “the early cusping stages of a chilling effect,” including a $120 million Lansing proposal that was pulled. Howell Township’s pause was followed by a withdrawn rezoning that local reports had tied to Meta. Those withdrawals are wins for opponents and lost pipeline for operators who needed Michigan water and Midwest power without a year of dead calendar.

The jobs math is lopsided in the same way. Construction crews show up; the finished hall does not staff like a factory. That gap is why empty-room votes still feel urgent in towns that have never seen a site plan. It is also why a bipartisan group in Lansing keeps floating a statewide pause until April 1, 2027 even as the governor’s office calls that path a veto. On the Thursday before Aug. 23, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers separately called for a one-year state moratorium “until we establish a fair, transparent approval process that puts local communities first,” according to The Hill. His campaign said he meant a state-level pause, a lever a U.S. senator would not actually hold.

After Saline, Boards Freeze First

The reason a quiet lakeshore township legislates with no applicant is not a mystery in Michigan anymore. Saline Township voted no and still got a campus. Neighboring boards learned to close the window before the lawsuit arrives.

1. September 2025: Saline Township’s planning commission and board reject rezoning for an OpenAI and Oracle campus; the board vote is 4-1, according to later statewide coverage.
2. Days after that vote: Developer Related Digital sues on exclusionary-zoning grounds, and the township settles rather than fund a fight against a project far larger than its budget.
3. Winter 2025-26: Construction proceeds on about 575 acres. MLive described a 2.2 million-square-foot Stargate site off W. Michigan Ave., and counted 14 Washtenaw County communities that then passed their own pauses.
4. July 14, 2026: Pere Marquette gives Ordinance 162 its first reading, with Smith saying no development prompted it.
5. Aug. 11, 2026: The township adopts the one-year freeze in a room where no one comments.
6. Aug. 14, 2026: Manistee Township follows with its own one-year ordinance.

In Lyon Township, even a later 180-day freeze could not touch Project Flex, a 1.8 million-square-foot campus that was already approved. Organizer Craig Kreutzberg told Michigan Public the water use alone was “infuriating,” and that he wants “non-negotiable criteria” if a hyperscale plant insists on that spot. Pere Marquette is trying to write those criteria before the first application, which is the only window Michigan law clearly gives a small board.

The Ludington freeze ends in a year, unless the township finishes its rules earlier or votes to extend. If it extends, a landowner can still walk into a hearing and try to prove the extra delay would cause immediate and irreparable harm. That is the only on-the-books off-ramp the Aug. 11 vote left in place.