On September 23, 2025, Cloverleaf wrote down, in an email to elected officials later released under Michigan public-records law, exactly what kind of place Cloverleaf says it will not build. Unwelcome communities. Mismatched land use. Ten times out of ten. On Wednesday, June 3, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at Hayneville Middle School, Lowndes County will show Cloverleaf, in person, that this is that place.
The meeting Lowndes has been asking for since March.
Wednesday, June 3, 5:30 to 7:30 PM, Hayneville Middle School. Cloverleaf Infrastructure is hosting its first and only public meeting on Project Red Clay.1 It has been billed as a community open house. It is a come-and-go. There is no formal presentation, no podium, no panel, and no on-the-record question-and-answer session. Attendees will walk from station to station. Cloverleaf staff and contracted experts will stand at each station to answer in person and in private.
Residents have asked for this meeting at every Commission session since the project surfaced in March, and in every coalition gathering since the April 13 meeting at the Highway 80 Cafe in Burkville.2 The format is what Cloverleaf agreed to host. It is not the format Lowndes asked for. Show up anyway.
Why the format.
When The Lowndes Signal asked Cloverleaf's Project Red Clay manager Michael Evans about a community-facing public meeting earlier this spring, he said it could come “at a later stage of project development.”3 The order of operations is the deal. Cloverleaf is here to assemble the package: land under option, power locked in, water provider lined up, an operator in the wings. The site is the asset they protect. Everything else, including the abatement they let everyone fight about in public, is negotiable as long as they keep the parcel.
The June 3 open house is the version of public engagement Cloverleaf can stage without putting an operator on a stage. The operator is the company that would actually own the campus, sign the water contract, sign the power agreement, and pay the property-tax bill. The operator has not been named.4 The full structural argument is at They have not named the tenant.
Bring this with you.
45strong has produced a two-page handout designed to be carried into the Wednesday meeting. Front side: seven verbatim Cloverleaf quotes, in writing, with the names and dates and sources attached. Back side: five hard questions to ask at the stations, and the receipts to use if Cloverleaf's staff dodge. Not policy demands. Questions Cloverleaf cannot answer, or will try to answer and find that the room knows the answer already. Print it at home and tuck it inside a folder.
Download or print: 45strong.net/toolkit/open-house-handout. Share the call to show up on Facebook, Instagram, or X with the graphic at 45strong.net/share.
Five questions Cloverleaf cannot answer.
The Commission vote is no longer the lever. Cloverleaf has signaled, in the way they continue to push through every public no, that the thirty-year abatement is not what they actually need. What they need is to assemble the package without losing the site. That is a different fight. It is the fight to make them leave.
These are not the coalition's five demands. They are the five questions a Cloverleaf staffer cannot answer at a station, or will try to answer and find that the room knows the receipt already. One per station. Ask for every answer in writing.
1. Name the tenant.
Cloverleaf does not build, own, or operate data centers. They assemble land and power and sell the package. They have not closed with an operator-tenant because the operator does not sign until the package is locked in.5
Ask: name the company that would actually own this campus, sign the water and power contracts, and pay the property-tax bill. Will Cloverleaf put that name in writing tonight?
If they dodge, the dodge is the answer. The order of operations is the deal. No tenant means no project.
2. Water — in gallons.
Aaron Bilyeu has described the cooling load as “the same as a small office building.”6 That is an analogy, not a number. Twelve miles east, the Meta Hope Hull campus disclosed a public figure of 30,000 gallons a day while its actual contract allocates 150,000 gallons of intake and 90,000 gallons of wastewater.7
Ask: what is peak daily water demand, in gallons, supported by a third-party engineering analysis paid for by Cloverleaf? Will they put it in writing tonight?
Five-million-square-foot facilities do not use water like office buildings. If Cloverleaf cannot give a number, no water provider in Lowndes County has the information it needs to sign anything.
3. What is your withdrawal trigger?
On September 23, 2025, Cloverleaf's Development Principal Michael Evans wrote, in an email to Michigan officials later released under public-records law: “Cloverleaf will not work in communities where this type of development is unwelcome or the development does not match the existing use for the land. That is a decision we will make ten times out of ten.”8
Ask: what is the test? When is it failed? Who decides? Put it in writing tonight.
Greenleaf ended after a single community meeting of approximately one hundred residents organized in under a week.9 Dundee ended after the village council voted to block water.10 Edwardsville ended after a paper trail surfaced.11 Lowndes has packed every public meeting since April. By Cloverleaf's own written standard, they should already be gone.
4. What is different about Lowndes?
Three withdrawals in seven months, each following organized community opposition. Lowndes is more organized than any of them: an open coalition with a name, a website, a petition, county officials on the record opposing the project, the Mayor of Hayneville opposed in writing, every Commission meeting at standing-room capacity.
Ask: what is different here that has kept Cloverleaf at the table?
The difference is the calendar. Alabama HB399 takes effect January 1, 2027 and cuts the data-center abatement ceiling from 30 years to 20.12 Cloverleaf's Lowndes land option expires January 27, 2027. Twenty-six days apart. The math is the math.
5. Will you come back under a different name?
In Monroe County, Georgia, Cloverleaf operates through a special-purpose vehicle named Rum Creek DevCo LLC.13 In Wisconsin, Cloverleaf publicly withdrew from Greenleaf in January 2026 and by spring 2026 was back in the adjacent Village of Wrightstown, advancing a data center through a public-infrastructure referendum that names no specific project.14
Ask: will Cloverleaf commit, in writing tonight, that no Cloverleaf-affiliated entity — no “Red Clay DevCo,” no successor, no rebrand — files for a data center anywhere in Lowndes County?
Without that guarantee, “withdrawal” is a pause. Cloverleaf's investors — NGP Energy Capital, Sandbrook Capital, and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan — will not write that guarantee for them. Their money is the lever that actually moves.
Stop them. Hit where it hurts.
The fight is no longer about a thirty-year tax break that Cloverleaf has signaled it can live without. The fight is to make the package un-assemblable: no operator willing to be named, no water provider willing to sign, no road improvement, no rezoning that ever needs to be voted on, no story for the investors that ends in a flip.
The investors are NGP Energy Capital, Sandbrook Capital, and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. They have public ESG and pension trustees they answer to. Every public no, every named official on the record opposing the project, every newspaper story about a refused operator question, every withdrawal letter from a neighbor authority, becomes part of the file their backers read. That is where it hurts. The Cloverleaf playbook needs a community willing to be quietly assembled around. Lowndes is not. More on the capital pressure at /responsible-investing.
The ask.
Three things, in order:
- Print the one-pager. Two sides, letter size, free. 45strong.net/toolkit/open-house-handout.
- Sign the petition before you go. 45strong.net/take-action. Every name is a name in the file the investors read.
- Tell three neighbors. Share the call to show up. 45strong.net/share.
Hayneville Middle School. Wednesday, June 3. 5:30 PM.