Building in Michigan Is Hard. Staying That Way Is a Choice.
by Chris Moyer
Sheetz announced its Michigan expansion in 2022. Its first location opened in 2024. A proposed site in Farmington Hills was rejected outright. The company has more than 800 stores across seven states and a cult following that generates lines at grand openings. It took years of effort to open a convenience store in Oakland County from a company that has been welcomed in almost every other place they have tried to go.
This fact tells you something important about Michigan.
The same dynamic plays out at much larger scale. At least 27 Michigan communities have passed moratoriums on data centers, some lasting two years. A $1 billion project in Howell Township was withdrawn after local opposition succeeded. One industry executive put it simply: they look for communities that want them, and if they find open arms, they build there. Ohio has quadrupled its data center capacity. Northern Virginia generates roughly $31 billion a year from data center investment. Michigan is still debating whether to allow them.
The Detroit Regional Chamber's 2026 voter poll makes the underlying problem concrete. When asked to rank Michigan on key economic measures, voters consistently placed the state around 25th nationally. The actual rankings: 40th in per capita income. 44th in student reading. 45th in attracting high-tech jobs.
Voters think the state is average. It is near the bottom. And that gap is not a communications problem. It is a leadership problem. When no elected official is willing to say clearly how far Michigan has fallen, there is no public pressure to do what it takes to change direction.
Bill Ford said it at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids last week as plainly as anyone has. He told a story about a startup at Michigan Central that wanted to stay in Michigan. Texas responded. Michigan did not move fast enough. The company left. His conclusion: Michigan cannot get out of its own way.
Michigan has real assets: top-five nationally in business-funded R&D, surging venture capital activity, a startup rate above the national average, fresh water, strong universities. The Ann Arbor-Detroit Innovation Corridor is exactly the kind of initiative that turns assets into momentum.
But assets without a story do not attract investment. And a story without political will does not get built.
What Michigan needs is not just better policy on individual projects. It needs a shared, honest narrative about where the state stands and where it is trying to go, consistent enough that a township board in the Thumb and a state legislator in the U.P. are operating from the same understanding of what is at stake.
That story does not yet exist in a form that has broken through to the public. The governor's race this fall is the next real opportunity to change that.
In the meantime, Michigan keeps opening convenience stores one hard-fought approval at a time, and watching other states sign the data center leases.