A groundbreaking was held June 1 for the $16 billion Saline Barn, a data center project already under construction and cited by Detroit general contractor Walbridge as the largest project in the company’s 110-year history and by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) as the state’s largest economic investment ever.e
The 250-acre campus in Saline Township, about ten miles southwest of Ann Arbor, is being developed by Related Digital for technology companies Oracle and OpenAI as a 1.4 GW scale campus that plans to have three single-story buildings of 550,000 square feet.
Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, which operates ChatGPT, and Whitmer were among officials at the event where the tech company’s boss said he hoped Saline Barn, named for a preserved red barn on former farmland, could be a model for future data centers.
“It’s very important to us that this becomes a model for how data centers and communities can benefit each other,” he said.
He claimed the data center will not increase energy prices, use less water than a typical office building and create 2,500 union construction jobs and 450 permanent operations jobs.
Other business partners involved in the project include Motor City Electric, Progressive Mechanical, John E. Green, Saw/EJ Electric, Superior Electric Great Lakes, Triangle Electric and Universal Partner Industries.
More than 200,000 union hours have already been logged on the project since construction began on Feb. 6, with hundreds of Michigan tradesmen on site each day, Walbridge says on his website.
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Construction began in February on the 250-acre campus in Michigan.
Photo courtesy of Related Digital
“This is the project of our lifetime,” said John Rakolta III, president of Walbridge. “Building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of American AI, in our home state, with our union partners, on a campus of this scale, is exactly the job this company was built for.
Walbridge says its partnership with Related Digital began with the drafting of a project labor agreement, executed under the National Maintenance Agreement and governing the 14 qualified unions affiliated with the signatories. It is the first data center in the country to be built under the memorandum of understanding announced in March between OpenAI and the North American Construction Unions (NABTU), according to the company.
“A project of this scale requires more than technical ability: it demands trust, partnership and a shared commitment to the community we’re building in,” Walbridge CEO Mike Haller said on the company’s website. “We are proud to help shape an agreement that will create good union jobs in Washtenaw County, expand learning pathways across Michigan and set a national standard for how this next generation of critical infrastructure should be built.”
Walbridge is also establishing a modular safety and quality center on campus to support the training of electrical apprentices and expand the pool of skilled professionals needed to build AI infrastructure across the region, the company says.
All power for the data center will be supplied by DTE Energy from existing resources, augmented by a new investment in battery storage funded by the project, with infrastructure costs borne by the project, according to Walbridge.
Local opposition to the data center
The project, which will use a closed-loop water cooling system, has been a divisive issue in the community.
In September 2025, the Saline Township Board voted 4-1 against rezoning about 575 acres of agricultural land to industrial for the project. Related Digital and the property owner sued the township in Washtenaw County Circuit Court arguing that the denial was exclusionary and baseless, unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious. “The municipality settled the lawsuit in October.
“The municipality does not have the money to fight against these big companies. [Project opponents] I have to understand that,” Township Councilman Dean Marion said in defense of the deal, according to the Saline Post.
Data center rival Kathryn Haushalter, whose property borders the data center, called the deal “devastating.”
He added: “We love having the windows open and going to sleep to the sound of frogs. Now it’s going to be the hum of a giant monstrosity of a data centre.”
The project calls for conserving more than 750 hectares as open space, farmland and wetlands. According to Related Digital, the project is legally restricted from any on-site expansion, with a decommissioning obligation to restore the land if it is ever removed.
Saline Township Treasurer Jennifer Zink resigned in May, saying she had received death threats over the project.
In an effort to show they can be good neighbors, the companies involved in the project, including Walbridge, announced at the groundbreaking that they will invest $10 million to renovate the Saline Recreation Center.
In addition, the companies report that the data center project will generate $8 million annually for Michigan schools and at least $1.6 million annually for the municipality.
The settlement reached by the community with the developer calls for $2 million for a community investment fund overseen by Saline Township trustees, $8 million for local fire departments and $4 million for a farmland preservation trust.
