Orion's Way — Sharon, Wisconsin

Don't touch the farmland.
Build on what's already here.

Orion's Way retrofits existing large-format buildings — grocery stores, big-box retail, former industrial sites — into high-density compute and data center capacity, using passive wind-catcher cooling and waste heat recovery instead of new construction on farmland.

The problem

Data centers are landing on farmland — and communities are pushing back.

Across Wisconsin, county and town boards are passing moratoriums on new data center construction. The conventional model clears farmland, asks a community to sign an NDA before it even sees a site plan, and cycles enormous volumes of water through cooling towers. Orion's Way is built around what communities have actually said they object to.

How it works

Retrofit, don't build new.

01

Air rights over existing buildings

Compute capacity is built on rooftops and air rights above commercial and industrial buildings already standing — no new land clearing, no farmland converted.

02

Ancient passive wind-catcher cooling

A Badgir-derived passive cooling system moves air without the water-intensive cooling towers conventional facilities depend on.

03

Waste heat recovery

Heat that would otherwise be exhausted is captured and routed back into community energy use — heating, greenhouses, district loops.

04

Public by default, not by request

Every material fact about a site — power draw, water use, noise, jobs, tax contribution, ownership — is published before a shovel goes in the ground.

The transparency standard

We ask for nothing. Everything below is public.

The conventional model asks a community to sign an NDA before it even sees a site plan. Orion's Way publishes this instead — before construction begins, and for as long as the facility runs.

SITE & DESIGN
Full 3D flyover of the finished retrofit, public before permitting begins.
POWER DRAW
Total facility load, peak vs. average, source mix — public dashboard, updated annually.
WATER USE
Source, volume, discharge, and treatment — disclosed as a one-pager, updated as engineering finalizes.
HEAT RECOVERY
BTUs/kWh recovered and homes or buildings served by the district loop — quarterly public update.
JOBS & LOCAL SPEND
Construction and operational jobs, dollars spent with local contractors — published at groundbreaking.
OWNERSHIP
Who owns and operates the facility, and a real named person the community can reach.