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Latest Podcast , Lowell, MI 49331, USA

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Future facility in planning stage

Grand Rapids MI

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Michigan

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Midwest US

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United States

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North America

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Americas

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Microsoft: Lowell, MI

Site planned for 2029 and has expansions through 2031

Utility Provider: Consumers Energy (MISO Zone 7)

Lot Size: 235 acres

Microsoft has revealed that it is behind a data center project in Lowell Township, Kent County. The project would see 235 acres developed into a data center campus. The Lowell facility is a strategic piece of Microsoft’s $80 billion global AI infrastructure investment for 2026. Designed to support the "AI era," the campus is expected to house high-density server environments powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs.

Although the initial 235-acre data center application submitted by Franklin Partners was withdrawn in December 2025 following intense community opposition, Microsoft has since officially identified itself as the project's developer and is moving ahead with a revamped proposal.

Power

Utility: Consumers Energy (MISO Zone 7). Lowell Light & Power, the municipal utility serving the City of Lowell and parts of Lowell and Vergennes Townships, does not serve the campus; local reporting puts the load at roughly 50 times LL&P's entire service area.
The filed site plan includes a dedicated utility substation alongside five data center buildings and an employee office building on roughly 237 acres.
Service would fall under Rate GPD as amended in MPSC Case U-21859 (order Nov 6, 2025): 100 MW minimum service threshold, or 100 MW aggregated across commonly-owned sites of 20 MW or more; 15-year minimum term; ramp-up up to five years; monthly billing at 80% of contract capacity.
Consumers Energy signed a large-load agreement for up to 1,000 MW, announced July 2025, and has confirmed it is pursuing an AI training facility with Microsoft near Grand Rapids. The agreement is not tethered to a single site and may span Microsoft's West Michigan cluster (Gaines, Lowell, Dorr).
Contract load begins 2028 and ramps through 2030. Local zoning approval is the stated remaining gate.
Zoning: rezoning plus a text amendment adding data centers as a permitted use in the LI district. The township board rejected a six-month moratorium 5-2 in May 2026. A revised application was filed in June 2026; the June 8, 2026 planning commission meeting ran six and a half hours without a decision.
No MW figure has been disclosed by Microsoft or Lowell Charter Township. The capacity records on this site are estimates.

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Sites within 15 miles of Park TwoInterested in this information?Contact us

Distance	Site	About
9.22 miles	Switch: Grand Rapids 2	Switch is planning second expansion of its data center campus in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Construction of a third data center building on the site is expected to begin "sooner rather than later," with the investment projected to be "several hundred million dollars."
9.35 miles	Switch: Grand Rapids (The Pyramid Campus)	The Grand Rapids campus is designed for up to 1.8 million square feet of data center space and up to 120 megawatts (MW) of power. It features one of the most unusual data center structures in the country, the Switch Pyramid.
9.35 miles	US Signal: MI01 Grand Rapids East	Purpose-built from the ground up for data center operations, the Grand Rapids East, Michigan data center is benchmarked to TIA 942 Tier 3 and 4 standards.
9.54 miles	Switch: Grand Rapids 1	After gaining approval in 2021, construction on the first 312,000-square-foot (29,000 sqm) expansion of Pyramid Campus began in 2022.
9.72 miles	Switch: Grand Rapids 3	This facility is part of Switch's Pyramid Campus in Grand Rapids.
11.14 miles	Plaza AlphaInterested in this information?Contact us	Planned Microsoft AI data center campus on ~414 acres at the northwest corner of Patterson Avenue SE and 76th Street SE in Gaines Charter Township, Kent County, southeast of Grand Rapids. Microsoft assembled the site through three transactions beginning August 2024 with a 316-acre purchase from Steelcase, expanded with 40.5 adjacent acres from Republic National Distributing in late 2024, and a third 57.8-acre Steelcase wood plant parcel under contract in 2026. Rezoning to light industrial is pending: the Gaines Township Planning Commission voted 7-0 to table the recommendation on April 15, 2026 following significant community opposition.
15.32 miles	123NET: DC4
15.33 miles	US Signal Grand Rapids South	(2) - 800a 480V 3 phase (2) 500kW diesel generators with 24 run time at full load 675kVa UPS with battery backup
15.37 miles	ManagedWay Byron Center
17.60 miles	Center MaxInterested in this information?Contact us	In 2024, Microsoft acquired a 144-acre property in Dorr Township, Allegan County, located along U.S. 131 at 14th st.
17.85 miles	MetroInterested in this information?Contact us	In 2024, Microsoft acquired a 128-acre property in Dorr Township, Allegan County, located along U.S. 131 at 144th Avenue.

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State of Azure Locations as of July 2019

Source: Microsoft

Conceptual Azure Regions and Availability Zones diagram

Source: Microsoft

Operating Company

Microsoft uses Containers (called ITPACs) to build out its data centers. These Containers are Shipping Containers fitted with all the necessary climate control, networking, server racks and other hardware necessary to be a “mini” data center all in one.

Azure Regions

An Azure region is a set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network.

With more global regions than any other cloud provider, Azure gives customers the flexibility to deploy applications where they need to. Azure is generally available in 46 regions around the world, with plans announced for 8 additional regions.

Geographies

An Azure geography is a discrete market, typically containing two or more regions, that preserves data residency and compliance boundaries.

Geographies allow customers with specific data-residency and compliance needs to keep their data and applications close. Geographies are fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure through their connection to our dedicated high-capacity networking infrastructure.

Availability Zones

Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region. Each Availability Zone is made up of one or more data centers equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking.

Availability Zones allow customers to run mission-critical applications with high availability and low-latency replication.

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