Related Digital, Blackstone and Oracle Break Ground on Stargate Data Center Campus in Michigan, Announce $10 Million Community Grant
SALINE TOWNSHIP, MI — June 1, 2026 — Related Digital, Blackstone, Oracle, OpenAI, and Walbridge joined Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to celebrate construction of The Barn, a multi-billion-dollar Stargate data center campus under development on a 250-acre site in Saline Township, Washtenaw County. The project has been described by its backers as the single largest economic investment in Michigan's history.
The project team simultaneously announced a $10 million grant to fund the expansion and modernization of the Saline Recreation Center, a community facility that has served Washtenaw County families for more than three decades. The event also drew leaders from North America's Building Trades Unions and Michigan labor representatives to recognize the more than 700 union tradespeople currently working on the site.
Financing and Capital Stack
The financing structure for the Stargate campus includes equity from Related Digital and funds affiliated with Blackstone, alongside fixed-rate, long-term debt financing anchored by PIMCO-managed funds and accounts.
Jeff Blau, Chairman of Related Digital and CEO of Related Companies, framed the project in terms of long-term community partnership. "This project represents one of the most significant infrastructure investments in Michigan's history and will help power the next generation of American innovation and artificial intelligence," Blau said. "The investments we are making in Saline, including our support for the Saline Center, reflect our commitment to being a long-term partner to this community."
Nadeem Meghji, Global Head of Blackstone Real Estate, added: "We're proud to back the largest ever investment in the state of Michigan and help deliver this critical AI infrastructure. This project will provide significant long-term benefits to the area, including thousands of jobs and new investment initiatives throughout the community that will be felt for decades to come."
Development Scale and Economic Impact
The Barn campus encompasses three 550,000-square-foot, single-story, LEED-certified data center buildings on the 250-acre Saline Township site. All campus buildings are actively under construction, with the first building nearing completion. More than $5 billion invested in site construction is expected to directly benefit Michigan contractors and suppliers.
The project team projects tax revenues in the billions of dollars, averaging well above $150 million per year for roughly two decades, benefiting Washtenaw County, Saline-area schools, the State of Michigan, and local funds including fire services, roads, and the local library. Saline Township alone is projected to receive nearly half of that benefit — equating to approximately $500,000 per Saline Township resident over the lease term, and more than 2,000 times what the township would have received had the land remained in agricultural use.
Governor Whitmer highlighted the project's economic significance. "The Barn will bring tens of billions of dollars of investment to Michigan, creating thousands of good-paying local jobs both in construction and tech," she said. "In Michigan, we're doing it the right way. We're ensuring that any company that invests in our communities will pay their own way, fulfill their commitment to good-paying jobs, create energy savings for residents, and be good neighbors by protecting our precious air, land, and water."
The project's economic footprint extends beyond construction. The team projects 450-plus permanent onsite jobs and more than 1,500 county-wide jobs to support the campus over time.
Partnership With Oracle, OpenAI and Building Trades Unions
The partnership with Oracle and OpenAI positions The Barn as a key node in the Stargate initiative, which OpenAI has described as an effort to expand AI compute capacity across the United States. Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk said the company is "honored to work alongside our partners to build highly performant, secure AI infrastructure that advances American AI leadership while serving the local community, protecting natural resources, and bringing good-paying jobs to Saline Township and the state of Michigan."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is "committed to doing it the right way: paying our own way on energy, protecting water supplies, and building in partnership with the communities that host us."
On the labor side, the Saline Township campus is the first data center in the country to be built under a project labor agreement executed under the National Maintenance Agreement, covering all 14 signatory affiliated skilled trade unions. It is also the first data center developed under the memorandum of understanding between OpenAI and North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU). The agreement was developed in collaboration with Walbridge, whose century-long relationships with Michigan's building trades made the partnership possible.
Union tradespeople on the site have already logged more than 300,000 union trade hours. The full buildout is expected to generate more than 2,500 union construction jobs.
Sean McGarvey, President of North America's Building Trades Unions, said the project demonstrates "what is possible when workforce strategy is part of project planning from the very beginning." McGarvey added: "The demand for AI and data infrastructure is growing rapidly, and the Building Trades and our contractor partners have spent decades preparing the skilled workforce, training capacity, and industry partnerships needed to build this next generation of infrastructure safely, efficiently, and at scale."
Walbridge CEO Mike Haller said the project reflects the Detroit-founded contractor's century-long commitment to Michigan. "This project reflects what we stand for — creating good union jobs, expanding apprenticeship opportunities for Michigan workers, and strengthening the next generation of skilled trades," Haller said.
Community Investment and Environmental Commitments
The $10 million community grant announced will fund renovation of the Saline Recreation Center's Aquatic Center, including an expanded pool with a zero-depth entry leisure area and lazy river, as well as improvements to the childcare area. The grant builds on $14 million in previously announced direct investments in local fire services and farmland preservation funds.
On the environmental side, Related Digital said the LEED-certified buildings will use a closed-loop, air-cooled system that limits water use to levels comparable to a standard office building. The project team also committed to preserving more than 750 acres of open space, farmland, and wetlands adjacent to the data center site.
The campus will pay for 100 percent of the electricity it uses during operations, in accordance with Michigan law. DTE Energy is supplying all project power using existing resources, augmented by a new battery storage investment financed entirely by the project. That battery investment is projected to generate an estimated $300 million in grid savings for DTE's existing customers while strengthening local grid reliability.
Related Digital, founded by Related Companies — one of the largest privately held real estate development firms in the United States with more than $100 billion in assets owned or under development — describes itself as a vertically integrated data center development and investment platform. The firm currently has data center projects underway in Ontario, Wyoming, Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, and Texas.