*Dowagiac residents are pushing back against Hyperscale Data as the Las Vegas-based company announces plans to more than double its campus, even as neighbors complain the existing facility's noise has become unbearable.*

The announcement comes months after Dowagiac City Manager Kevin Anderson told the public the city never received formal development plans from the company. Instead, the city learned about the expansion through a press release announcing intentions to purchase additional property within 60 days.

Residents say they have reached out to Hyperscale but never gotten answers.

"We saw the press release like you did, that said they are looking to buy some additional property and hoping to close on some in the next 60 days," Anderson said. "We haven't had any contact with them about that."

The Noise Problem

Terry Raab, a Dowagiac resident living near the facility, says the noise has made his summer unbearable. He told WWMT News Channel 3 he no longer opens his windows because of the insufferable sound.

Raab worries about what the noise will do to his property value.

"If we want to resell the house, who's going to want to buy the house with that noise? No one's going to want to buy," Raab said.

Jerry Dodd, a longtime resident, told News Channel 3 he's never heard the site this loud and wishes the company would put up a sound-reducing wall.

News Channel 3 called Hyperscale directly but was told by an automated line that someone would follow up. Residents who have reached out to the company have never received answers.

Mayor Demands Transparency

Dowagiac Mayor Patrick Bakeman has taken his frustrations directly to Hyperscale CEO Will Horne through an open letter released April 1.

Bakeman, who owns a barber shop in the small city, is a first-term mayor elected last year.

The letter comes after Hyperscale announced last summer its intention to expand from a 30-megawatt to a 340-megawatt site power equivalent of tens of thousands of homes.

"Both announcements were vague, and you have neither applied for nor received any approvals necessary to facilitate your expansion plans. By doing this, you've bred uncertainty and eroded our confidence that you will do the right thing in our community," Bakeman wrote.

The city has spent several months preparing for a plan submission from the company, with leaders spending time and money educating themselves on data center issues in collaboration with experts.

Dowagiac has implemented enforceable decibel levels in its noise ordinance following complaints from residents living near the data center building.

Bakeman told the company to immediately announce which additional property it claims to be purchasing and submit plans within 45 days.

No Formal Plans Submitted

Hyperscale Data's subsidiary purchased the 617,000-square-foot Business Center of Southwestern Michigan in 2021. The company has used a portion of the property for cryptocurrency mining and now intends to scale up data center operations to meet growing demand for AI and machine learning processing power.

City officials say they were caught off guard by Hyperscale's expansion announcements and received no formal development plans or permit requests.

Hyperscale said it has an "agreement in principle" with an unnamed local utility to meet the electricity demand. Indiana Michigan Power serves the facility but told MLive it does not have any agreements or commitments in place to provide the company with the amount of power in question.

Data centers can also require significant amounts of water for cooling, depending on the systems employed, but it remains unclear if that would be the case in Dowagiac.

A Growing Concern in Southwest Michigan

The situation in Dowagiac represents the latest flashpoint in tensions between Michigan communities and data center developers who have embraced Michigan as a potential landing spot for server warehouses.

While the Dowagiac expansion at 340 megawatts would be significantly smaller than the 1,400-megawatt project for OpenAI and Oracle under construction in Saline Township south of Ann Arbor, or the proposed 1,000-megawatt Google data center in Wayne County's Van Buren Township, it is still a significant power draw.

Data centers accounted for 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption in 2024 according to the International Energy Agency.

With tech companies rapidly scaling up AI output, this is expected to worsen in coming years. Meanwhile, large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, enough to supply a town of up to 50,000 people.

For Raab, though, the issue has ultimately changed his way of life for the worse.

"We loved it here, but now, I don't know," he told WWMT.

Requests for comment to Hyperscale sent by email and left by phone with what appeared to be an AI chatbot were not immediately returned.

What Residents Want

Mayor Bakeman told the company:

"In Dowagiac, we pride ourselves on our ability to create an environment in which both businesses and neighbors can be successful. I can cite many examples throughout Dowagiac where this is occurring. Our expectation has always been that your business, like the many previous industrial uses of your property, can safely and peacefully coexist with the people living in the homes near your business."

Bakeman stands ready to listen but emphasized no proposal has been submitted and no decisions have been made.

"It is your responsibility to bring forward a clear and transparent plan," he said.