Detroit council member seeks a data center permit pause through March 2028

DETROIT — One Detroit City Council member wants the city to stop issuing permits for new AI data centers until it has rules for them. In a Sept. 29 memo, District 6 Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero asked the council’s legal staff to draft an interim zoning ordinance that would pause permits for new enterprise AI data centers until March 17, 2028, BridgeDetroit reported Tuesday.

The council already asked once. In March it passed a resolution urging Mayor Mary Sheffield’s administration to put a two-year moratorium in place while the city studied grid stability, water use, noise and the economic trade-offs, according to a City Planning Commission staff report. Sheffield has not acted on that request. A mayoral spokesman told BridgeDetroit no decision has been made. The planning staff report says the administration has, in practice, paused permits for new stand-alone data centers while the issue is under review.

Santiago-Romero told BridgeDetroit that only the mayor can declare a moratorium, but that the council controls zoning and can pass an ordinance, which the mayor could veto. She also said she is not optimistic. Most colleagues she has talked to would rather focus on the permanent zoning rules already being written, and an interim ordinance would need its own rezoning process, with planning commission review, public hearings and committee work that could take months.

Those permanent rules are being drafted by the City Planning Commission after a series of working group meetings convened by Council Member Scott Benson. Benson has said the goal is council approval by Dec. 31. He told BridgeDetroit the policy has to be defensible because the industry is quick to sue.

Pressure for a pause has been building since summer. Planet Detroit reported that nine environmental justice and community groups, along with U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, state Sen. Stephanie Chang and Santiago-Romero, signed a July 15 letter asking Sheffield for a moratorium.

At least six data centers already operate in Detroit as stand-alone uses, a planning commission analysis found, and city officials have said there is no room in the city for “hyperscale” sites, which start at 250 acres. Santiago-Romero’s memo points to Lansing, Flint and Pontiac as Michigan cities that have taken similar steps.

Sources:
BridgeDetroit, “Detroit is drafting data center rules. One council member wants a pause first,” Oct. 6, 2026, https://www.bridgedetroit.com/detroit-is-drafting-data-center-rules-one-council-member-wants-a-pause-first/
Planet Detroit, “Environmental groups call for Detroit data center moratorium as city develops ordinance,” Sept. 1, 2026, https://planetdetroit.org/2026/09/detroit-data-center-moratorium-push/
City of Detroit, City Planning Commission staff report, “Data Center – Initial,” Aug. 2026, https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/events/2026-08/Staff%20Report%20-%20Data%20Center%20-%20Initial.pdf
Photo: WMrapids, “Coleman A. Young Municipal Center 2025,” 2025, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) 1.0, cropped and color-corrected, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coleman_A._Young_Municipal_Center_2025.jpg

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