Logistics real estate firm Panattoni is looking to develop a data center campus outside Detroit, Michigan.

Local press including MLive and ABC, report Panattoni is planning to develop a large campus in Van Buren Township.

The company is said to be targeting 282 acres on the north side of the I-94 and east of Haggerty Road for a potential gigawatt-scale campus.

The development is currently known as Project Cannoli, according to site plans seen by WEMU. The plans suggest three buildings and an on-site substation are planned.

Van Buren, in Wayne County, is located on the western outskirts of Detroit.

Plans were detailed at a township meeting last week, reportedly filled with local residents largely opposed to the development. It seems the company does not currently have an anchor tenant secured.

“We’ve been talking to the community, understanding what they want and what they don’t,” Adam Kramer, head of data centers for Panattoni, told attendees during the meeting. “We’ve been very conscious about making sure this is the lowest impact project possible, while being a benefit to the community.”

“A lot of these data center projects are going through rezoning where they’re taking agricultural land and rezoning it to become industrial for data centers,” Kramer continued. “What we did was the opposite. We went out and found industrial land that was zoned for data centers by right, which means the township’s master plan said this is where we want data centers, and that’s where we’re putting a data center.”

Founded in 2005 and traditionally focused on industrial and logistics development, Panattoni has delivered projects totaling more than 23 million sqm (247 million sq ft) across Europe to date. Globally, its portfolio encompasses more than 58 million sqm (624 million sq ft) serving around 2,500 clients, including Amazon, DHL, FedEx, DPD, Coca-Cola, Bosch, and Volkswagen.

The company made some select moves into the data center market and formed a dedicated data center team in London earlier this year. After dropping plans for a data center development outside London in 2022, the company has filed to develop a data center in Spain and sold a site in California to Amazon for a digital campus.

In North America, Panattoni has said it aims to develop 1GW of data center capacity by 2030.

Nonprofit lobbying group the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance of Michigan is encouraging residents to support its campaign to ban new data centers in the state. A Change.org petition against the project has more than 1,100 signatures at the time of writing.

US Signal files to expand Detroit facility

This month also saw US Signal file to continue phased construction of a data center site in Van Buren.

The company currently operates one 25,000 sq ft (2,322 sqm) facility on on a 7.91-acre parcel located at the northeast corner of Haggerty Road and Tyler Road.

The company received planning approval for the first building from the planning commission in May 2019. At the time, the company received approval for three additional phases of 25,000 square feet each for a total of 100,000 (9,290 sqm) square feet.

Via U.S. Signal Properties LLC, the company is now requesting that phases II and III comprise a 35,000 sq ft (3,251 sqm) addition and a future Phase IV totaling approximately 27,000 sq ft (2,508 sqm), for a total building area of 87,100 sq ft (8,091 sqm).

City staff recommended approval.

After breaking ground in 2018, US Signal launched the facility in Van Buren in March 2020.

Founded in 2001, US Signal provides data center, cloud hosting, and colocation services. Acquired by Igneo Infrastructure Partners in February 2023, the company operates a 9,500-mile fiber network and has around 16 data centers across Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, Colorado, and Wisconsin.