In Washington Township, State Law Protects the Orchards. Nothing Protects the Field Next Door.

"A temporary moratorium should be put in place to give our community time to adopt legal safeguards."

That's Washington Township Clerk Audrey Brown, explaining in May why the township board just froze all new data center applications for six months. The quote sounds like routine local governance. It isn't. It's the closing line of a seven-month fight over 312 acres of land on 32 Mile Road that almost turned a stretch of farmland into an industrial technology campus, and it tells anyone shopping for acreage in Washington Township something the orchard photos and cider mill listings never will.

If you're looking at land here because it feels permanently rural, the last year of township meetings says otherwise. Rural is what the zoning map says today. It isn't a guarantee.

The Site Nobody Was Watching Until Everyone Was

In November 2025, Prologis, a California-based real estate company, filed a conditional rezoning application for four parcels on the south side of 32 Mile Road, between M-53 and Powell Road. The proposal: a 312-acre technical campus that would clear the way for a data center, the kind of server farm now spreading across Michigan as AI infrastructure demand grows.

The site had been a golf course and farmland. It also sits near the Romeo State Airport and the former Romeo Ford plant, both existing industrial-adjacent uses that gave the rezoning request a plausible planning argument, even as it bordered residential development on Powell and 31 Mile Roads.

The township's Planning Commission hearing on December 11, 2025 drew a packed room. Ahead of that meeting, more than 170 residents emailed the commission, the large majority opposed. The commission postponed a decision. Here's how the rest of it played out:

Three postponements, one withdrawal, one moratorium. Not a resolution.

Two Different Laws, Doing Two Different Jobs

Here's where most guides to this township stop, and where the useful part actually starts. Washington Township's own identity runs through Westview Orchards and Winery, founded in what is now the township back in 1813, and Big Red Orchard and Cider Mill on 32 Mile Road, the same road at the center of the Prologis fight. Those working farms carry real legal protection. Michigan's Right to Farm Act, first passed in 1981 and expanded in 2000, shields a farm or farm operation from being declared a public or private nuisance if it follows the state's Generally Accepted Agricultural and Management Practices. That protection is why a neighbor moving in next to a cider mill can't sue over the smell of pressed apples or the noise of harvest equipment, and why townships across Michigan have lost court challenges when they tried to zone or litigate around it.

What the Right to Farm Act does not do is stop a landowner, or a buyer of that land, from rezoning it out of agricultural use entirely. It protects farms that are farming. It says nothing about what happens to that same acreage the day it's sold to a developer and the crops stop. The Prologis site was farmland and a golf course right up until it became a rezoning application. No state statute stood in the way of that conversion. Only a local planning process did, and that process came within one contested vote of approving it.

That's the actual mechanism at work in this township. One state law protects working agriculture from nuisance complaints. A completely separate, much more fragile local process, subject to board turnover, developer persistence, and whichever way 170 emails happen to lean, decides whether that land stays agricultural, becomes another subdivision, or turns into 312 acres of server racks.

The Moratorium Has a Clock, and It's Already Running

The six-month moratorium passed May 23, 2026 runs until it expires or until the township adopts a permanent data center ordinance, whichever comes first. Do the math from today's date and that window closes around late November 2026. As of the most recent public reporting, the Planning Commission was still drafting those rules, weighing questions like water usage that the township engineer raised directly, telling commissioners that on a project this size, "there is a limit" to what the system can absorb.

That means anyone closing on land in this corridor right now isn't buying into a settled zoning outcome. They're buying into a pause. The ordinance that will eventually govern data centers, and by extension what happens the next time a developer eyes a large parcel near M-53 and 32 Mile, hasn't been written yet. Prologis has already said, through its attorney, that it will likely wait for that ordinance before trying again rather than walk away for good.

What Changes the Way You Look at a Land Listing Here

None of this means Washington Township is suddenly an industrial zone. Most of the township, especially the golf course communities and orchard-adjacent subdivisions along the Macomb Orchard Trail, is nowhere near this particular fight. But it does change the questions worth asking before you put money down on acreage, especially if you're the kind of buyer this township tends to attract: someone purchasing raw land, inheriting a parcel, or evaluating a large-lot property where zoning stability is part of the value.

Before you write an offer on land here, it's worth finding out:

• Is the parcel, or any adjacent parcel, within a mile of an existing industrial or institutional use like an airport or a former plant site. Those are the sites large-scale rezoning requests target first.
• Has the township's Planning Commission taken up any pending zoning ordinance amendments that could affect the parcel's district, particularly anything tied to the current data center rulemaking.
• What district is the land zoned today, and has that district seen a conditional or straight rezoning request in the past two years.
• If the appeal of the land is its proximity to a working farm, does that farm's protection under the Right to Farm Act actually extend to the vacant parcel you're buying, or only to the working operation next door.

None of these questions show up on a listing sheet. They show up in planning commission minutes and township board agendas, which is exactly the kind of homework that separates a land purchase that holds its character for the next twenty years from one that doesn't.

Land pricing here already reflects some of this uncertainty, whether buyers realize it or not. As of this summer, active land listings in Washington Township run from roughly $50,000 an acre for standard vacant residential lots up past $80,000 an acre once larger, more development-flexible tracts enter the average. That spread isn't random. It tracks with how much development optionality a given parcel carries, which is another way of saying it tracks with zoning risk and zoning opportunity at the same time.

The Short Version

Michigan law protects the orchards. It says nothing about the fields around them. What actually determines whether a piece of Washington Township land stays rural, becomes another subdivision, or hosts something like a data center is a local zoning process that just proved, over seven months and three postponements, how close that outcome can come to changing.

If you're evaluating acreage, a custom-home lot, or an inherited parcel anywhere in this township, that history is worth understanding before the offer, not after the closing. The Zibkowski Team works Washington Township and the surrounding Macomb and Oakland County communities every week, including the land and estate situations where a zoning question can matter more than the listing price. Get a Free Home Valuation and we'll walk the parcel's history with you, not just its price.

A few direct questions

Is the data center proposal completely dead? No. Prologis withdrew its application in May 2026, but its attorney indicated the company will likely wait for the township's new data center ordinance before deciding whether to reapply. The site itself hasn't been rezoned back to anything permanent.

Does the moratorium apply to land that's already zoned residential? The moratorium covers new data center applications specifically. It doesn't change the zoning of parcels that aren't part of an active or future rezoning request, but it also doesn't offer any parcel a permanent guarantee once the moratorium lapses.

Does the Right to Farm Act protect my property value if I live near an orchard? It protects the working farm from nuisance claims. It doesn't protect surrounding land use, zoning classification, or resale value, which are governed separately by the township's zoning ordinance and planning process.