Lyon Township Board Denies Easement for Hyperscale Data Center Project Flex

For the board of a small southwest Oakland County community, a massive hyperscale data center project called Project Flex is a choice between hell or high water.

The Lyon Township board of trustees — facing a citizen-led recall effort — voted unanimously earlier this month to deny an easement for a stormwater project. The move effectively stops general contractor Walbridge and developer Verrus from moving forward with the massive data center that’s targeting Anthropic, the maker of Claude, as its end user.

It’s an about-face for the trustees, who have approved all other easements for developments at Walbridge’s South Hill Business Park off of Grand River Avenue where Walbridge wants to build the data center. Walbridge and the Oakland County Water Resource Commission were seeking an easement on 50 feet of township land for a drain bypass for stormwater management.

The drain improvements, generally regarded as an afterthought in most communities, have become a hot-button issue in Lyon Township — and even drew mailers from a political action group trying to influence residents to pressure the trustees to approve the easement.

But whether the board’s pushback on the easement is enough to stop a project in play with some of the biggest tech companies in the country remains to be seen.

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#data center project #Lyon Township #community opposition #stormwater management #tech development