The room at the Ann Arbor Marriott Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest filled to capacity on September 9, 2026, and it did not stay polite for long. Residents shouted “we did not invite you” at University of Michigan officials, rejecting a proposed $1.2 billion, roughly 220,000-square-foot high-performance computing facility planned for a 144-acre site on Textile Road near the Huron River.
The project’s co-developer is Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons lab created for the Manhattan Project. That fact alone has upended trust in one of Michigan’s most prominent institutions.
What U-M and Los Alamos Are Actually Building
The facility would serve two distinct missions: academic research and classified federal computing for a nuclear weapons laboratory.
U-M describes the center as dual-use, combining a university computing hub for cancer research, drug discovery, and climate modeling with a federal research component supporting LANL’s national security work, according to Michigan Public Radio. LANL has acknowledged that some computational research conducted at the facility could relate to nuclear modernization, specifically safety and reliability simulations of the existing stockpile, with no physical weapons, plutonium, or nuclear materials planned on site. Those simulations are intended to assess the safety and reliability of the existing arsenal without live testing.
Project lead engineer Steven Ceccio argued at the town hall that the facility is smaller than nearby hyperscale proposals, pointing to “The Barn,” a proposed 1.4-gigawatt OpenAI-linked project in Saline Township, per Michigan Public Radio. His position: this is a scientific computing center, not a commercial one.
“Some of us want those answers and we know that to get them is going to take really strong and big abilities to do computing.”, U-M faculty director Patricia Hurn, as reported by Michigan Public Radio.
The Town Hall That Went Sideways
Los Alamos skipped the meeting, sent a letter instead, and the crowd’s patience with U-M ran out quickly.
LANL sent no representatives to the September 9 event. A U-M official read the letter aloud to the audience, per MLive. That letter pushed back on Ypsilanti Township attorney Douglas Winters’ description of the facility as a “high-value target,” stating that neither LANL, U-M, nor any state or federal agency had officially used that designation, a concern that reflects how AI is making critical infrastructure an increasingly visible security concern.
Winters defended the phrase, citing LANL’s global identity and the planned concentration of what he called “the biggest, baddest, fastest” computers, according to 404 Media. Township Supervisor Brenda Stumbo told the crowd that residents are already selling their homes out of fear, and said the controversy “started with a lie,” asking U-M directly to “change your mind,” per ClickOnDetroit.
“Even the best-designed data centers are still loud, have emissions, and rely on generators. That’s why they’re usually in the middle of nowhere, not next to homes and schools.”, Resident identified as Andy, a data center industry professional, per ClickOnDetroit
Where It Stands Now
A township moratorium is the community’s sharpest legal tool so far, but the broader standoff remains unresolved.
Ypsilanti Township passed a six-month moratorium on major electrical infrastructure to slow the project’s momentum. U-M has not publicly indicated any intention to reconsider the Textile Road site. Residents and township officials say they plan to monitor permit filings and push for further public meetings as the moratorium period runs.
The core question this fight raises extends well beyond one township. When federal research infrastructure and academic ambition land next to a community that never asked for either, deciding who holds the final say will matter far beyond Textile Road.
