The proposal to build a data center in downtown Lansing has received a large amount of pushback from residents, and the company behind the project is doing what it can to assuage concerns before the city council votes in February.
Company executives of Deep Green, the data center construction and operation company based in London, spoke at a virtual community event Thursday to address people’s concerns about the project.
Luke Gavin, the vice president of Deep Green’s North America team, outlined the facility’s potential water usage, saying it would use an insignificant amount of water.
“The Grand River is not touched, affected or altered in any way, and in total, the facility is expected to have similar water consumption to the Wendy’s across the road,” he said.
Deep Green uses a “closed loop” water system to reduce its overall water usage, but neither Gavin nor company co-founder Matt Craggs could provide an estimate of how much water would be needed to kick off the system.
The water system also raised residents’ concerns regarding its use of glycol, or antifreeze, due to the chemicals toxic nature.
Craggs said the glycol will not be dumped into the local waterways and instead will be disposed of offsite.
“I would happily live adjacent to a data center,” he said in response to health concerns. “In fact, when we were first starting the company, we had prototypes running in our co-founder Mark’s house. There's one running there now, and I've looked at testing them out within my wife's business, where I am today. There's nothing that concerns me from a safety perspective.”
Residents were also concerned about whether the data center would provide jobs in the community.
Craggs said Deep Green would be working with union labor and using a local-first hiring model. No employees, he said, would be hired from the United Kingdom.
“By their very nature, they need to be on site for the vast majority,” Craggs said, “as they're maintaining and looking after all the kits and the servers within the site.”
The estimate of how many jobs the data center will produce varies.
“It's more than the parking lot’s generating, so let's put it that way,” Gavin said.
While many virtual comments and questions were against the project, the presentation itself cited local support from Michigan State University associate professor Doug Bessette, who told City Pulse on Nov. 5, 2025, that “‘If you’re going to assume that we need to continue to build data centers because we want to pursue AI and cloud computing and cloud storage, this is the way I would recommend we do it.'”
However, Bessette commented during the webinar that his quote had been taken out of context by Deep Green executives.
“I also said, ‘A data center will never be sustainable,’” Bessette wrote. “‘It will always require more energy to run than it could ever produce,” and that I’m ‘nervous about both the potential risks of AI technologies themselves and their climate and energy impacts.’”
Multiple attendees asked Craggs and Gavin to address Bessette’s correction.
“Consuming power isn't necessarily, inherently bad if the power is coming from clean sources,” Gavin said. “Data centers do consume power, but if built in the right way, they can be sustainable. Our very strong view is the data center boom is here to stay, and I think that's why we really focused on the part of the quote.”
The webinar was hosted by Bellwether PR, a Lansing-based public relations firm.
Deep Green executives and Lansing City Council members will host an open house Saturday, Jan. 24, at the Lansing Center. Members of the public are invited to attend.
Bellwether PR is a financial supporter of WKAR.
