Microsoft has purchased over 1,000 acres of land in Wisconsin, totaling nearly $176 million.
The transactions included a $76 million purchase for 407 acres, which included a local pumpkin farm attraction, from a Wisconsin family.
Microsoft just paid $76 million for a Wisconsin pumpkin farm https://t.co/LtCd0AZ1tl
— The Verge (@verge) December 22, 2023
“The local government initially offered the Creuziger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin about a third of that sum in 2017 as a part of an agreement with the Foxconn Technology Group. But the family refused, opting to hold out for a better offer,” The Verge reports.
Microsoft purchased another 641 acres from the village of Mount Pleasant.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
The three transactions totaled nearly $176 million.
The company paid the Village of Mount Pleasant $63.2 million for 400 acres on Braun Road and Durand Avenue, according to newly filed deeds.
Also, Microsoft paid the village $36.5 million for 241 acres on County Highway H.
Finally, the company bought 407 acres on Braun Road and Durand Avenue from Creuziger Farms Inc. for $76 million, according to the deeds posted online Wednesday by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
Microsoft completes its land purchase for future data centers near Foxconn site https://t.co/MQPoDBX505 via @journalsentinel
— TomDaykin (@TomDaykin) December 20, 2023
The technology corporation intends to develop a data center campus in the area.
From The Verge:
The land, which also includes the Land of the Giants pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, neighbors another 641 acres of land purchased by Microsoft from the village of Mount Pleasant — for a total of $99.7 million. The end goal for Microsoft is to build a data center campus in the area, in which it plans to invest over $1 billion.
All told, the sale is a happy ending for the village, after several years of confusion and mixed signals from Foxconn. It’s only been two years since Foxconn drastically scaled back its promised $10 billion investment in Mount Pleasant, which would have included a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.
The Milwaukee Business Journal reported that Microsoft plans to initially hire 200 employees at its Mount Pleasant data center — and could add over 460 jobs over time. But it’ll still be a fraction of the 13,000 jobs that Foxconn originally promised the area back in 2017.