Why Detroit is a market at all
Detroit is an automotive and manufacturing market, and its colocation demand looks like that: engineering workloads, plant systems, supplier integration, and the enterprise IT of companies whose headquarters are here. It is a real market with real tenants, and it has been served for two decades by a small group of local and regional operators rather than by the national wholesale names.
The concentration is extreme even by the standards of a secondary market. Nearly half of Southeast Michigan's network presences sit in one building on Northwestern Highway in Southfield, and one operator holds three of the five most connected addresses in the region. Southfield, not Detroit, is the physical centre of this market, and a search that starts downtown starts in the wrong place.
What has changed is everything around it. Michigan passed data center tax incentives at the end of 2024 and the hyperscale money arrived immediately. None of it is colocation, and all of it competes with colocation for the same power and the same political goodwill.
Every megawatt figure on this page is one of two things: power a utility has been approved to supply, or capacity a developer has proposed to a township. Those are different, and neither one is space you can lease. Nothing published anywhere discloses contractible capacity in this metro. A number on a brochure is a marketing position, not an inventory.
Who is actually plugged in across Detroit and Southeast Michigan
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain, so every row below links to the building's own public entry.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 16 | Registered in PeeringDB across Detroit and Southeast Michigan, by 11 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 14 | 2 carry no network presence, which usually means single tenant or simply unregistered |
| Network presences | 127 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 6 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 5 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 46% | 123.NET - DC1 - 24700 Northwestern Hwy. holds 59 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59 | 123.NET - DC1 - 24700 Northwestern Hwy. | 123.Net, LLC. | 3 | 2 |
| 14 | EdgeConneX Detroit (EDCDET01) | EdgeConneX Inc. | 1 | 1 |
| 9 | 123.NET - DC3 - 24245 Northwestern Hwy. | 123.Net, LLC. | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | 365 Data Centers Detroit (DT1) | 365 Data Centers | 1 | 1 |
| 8 | 123.NET - DC2 - 24275 Northwestern Hwy. | 123.Net, LLC. | 1 | 0 |
| 7 | ManagedWay TYM1 | ManagedWay Company | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Liberty Center One | Liberty Center One | 0 | 1 |
| 4 | ManagedWay TYM2 | ManagedWay Company | 0 | 0 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
What has been announced in Detroit and Southeast Michigan
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below was read on the page it links to.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.4 GW | OpenAI, Oracle and Related Digital | Stargate, Saline Township | A 250 acre site in Washtenaw County put at $16 billion, whose 1.4 gigawatts the Michigan Public Service Commission conditionally approved DTE Energy to supply. It would be the largest facility in the state and is not colocation. Utility supply contract approved |
| 1 GW | Not disclosed | Van Buren Township proposal | A one gigawatt proposal the township is targeting, reported to use as much as 3.6 million gallons of water a day. Proposed, under municipal review |
| 26 MW | Not disclosed | Allen Park proposal | The only figure on this list at a scale a colocation buyer would recognise, and the town has put off deciding on it. Proposed, decision postponed |
Not one of these three rows is space you could lease. They are hyperscale and single tenant, and the colocation market they sit beside is a handful of buildings on one road in Southfield. They are on the page because they decide what power and what politics the colocation operators will be negotiating inside for the next decade, and because the argument about who pays is already public: Oracle sought a 12 year, 50 percent abatement on real and personal property taxes against a $43 billion valuation it offered for the Saline Township project, and the township used a $4.8 billion valuation instead. Read the reporting.
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and every figure links to the report it came from and was read in that report before it was written down. It is never added to the interconnection count above: one is a plan a company published, the other is a building a network registered itself into. Neither is availability.
What Stargate actually changed
The Saline Township project is a joint venture involving OpenAI, Oracle and Related Digital on a 250 acre site in Washtenaw County, put at $16 billion. Its 1.4 gigawatts would consume more electricity than a million homes and would make it the largest facility in Michigan. In December 2025 the Michigan Public Service Commission's three commissioners voted unanimously to conditionally approve DTE Energy's contracts to supply that power, and in January 2026 DTE accepted the conditions attached.
The tax argument ran alongside it and is worth knowing because it sets the template every other Michigan township is now working from. Oracle sought a twelve year, 50 percent abatement on real and personal property taxes against a $43 billion valuation it offered for the project. Saline Township ultimately used a $4.8 billion valuation instead, and a consent agreement required the township to approve the project in exchange for a pledge from Related Digital to invest $10 million locally.
None of that is capacity you can buy. It matters to a colocation tenant for one reason: DTE is now contractually committed to a load larger than anything else on its system, and every subsequent interconnection request in Southeast Michigan queues behind that commitment. Ask any operator offering you growth headroom how that headroom sits relative to the Saline contracts.
The rest of the pipeline, and how local it has become
Van Buren Township is weighing a one gigawatt proposal, reported to use as much as 3.6 million gallons of water a day. More than two hundred Lyon Township residents turned out to a meeting about a planned 1.8 million square foot data center. Allen Park postponed a decision on a 26 megawatt project, which is the only figure in this metro at a scale a colocation buyer would recognise, and it is the one the town could not decide on.
That pattern is the market. The very large projects are moving through state level utility regulation while the ordinary ones are getting stuck in township meetings, and the difference is not size so much as who is in the room. If you are being offered space in something unbuilt here, the question is which township, and what happened at its last meeting.
Where the market actually is, submarket by submarket
Northwestern Highway, Southfield
The carrier hotel corridor and effectively the whole interconnection market. 123Net operates several adjacent buildings here and EdgeConneX and 365 Data Centers sit alongside them. If you need carriers, exchanges or cross-connects in Michigan, this is the address.
Troy and the northern suburbs
ManagedWay and a handful of regional operators serve the Oakland County enterprise base. Suburban economics, hands-on service, meaningfully less network than Southfield. It suits production and back office loads for companies already in the area.
Royal Oak and the inner ring
Smaller multi-tenant facilities close to the city. A reasonable answer for a few racks with local hands, and rarely the right answer for anything that needs to grow.
Washtenaw and western Wayne counties
Saline Township, Van Buren, Lyon and Ann Arbor, where the gigawatt scale proposals are. This is where Michigan's power and politics are being decided and where none of the space is leasable. Watch it; do not shop it.
When this market is right, and when it is the wrong choice
Detroit is the right answer when your business is in Michigan. For an automotive supplier, a manufacturer, a health system or a regional financial services firm that needs low latency to its own plants and offices and a provider that will meet you in person, this market works well and the operators here are used to enterprise-sized deals rather than only hyperscale ones.
It is a reasonable disaster recovery position for a Chicago primary, at 280 miles and a short fibre run, with cheaper space and a genuinely different weather and grid exposure.
It is the wrong choice if you need scale or optionality. There is no wholesale colocation product here, the interconnection market is effectively one road, and DTE's queue now has a 1.4 gigawatt commitment ahead of whatever you ask for. If your requirement is measured in tens of megawatts, the honest comparison is Chicago or Columbus, both of which are close, deeper and further along.
Ask where the building is before you ask anything else, because nearly half this market's network sits on one street in Southfield and a facility elsewhere is a different product at a similar price. Get the specific building's carrier and network list, and if you are being shown a suburban site, price the cross-connect back to Northwestern Highway and get its provisioning time in writing. On power, ask directly how the operator's growth headroom sits relative to DTE's Saline Township commitments, because 1.4 gigawatts is now ahead of you in that queue and no operator's roadmap is independent of it. If the space is unbuilt, ask which township and check what its board has done this year, because the ordinary sized projects here are the ones getting stopped. And if a tax incentive is part of the pitch, ask which abatement, at what valuation, and whether it has actually been granted: the Saline Township deal was approved at a valuation an order of magnitude below the one first proposed.