Microsoft plans to use the Creuziger family’s land to build a multi-building data center as part of a $1 billion investment in the village of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin (USA).
According to The Verge, the Creuziger family has agreed to sell the 407-acre land (about 1.65 km 2 ), including a large pumpkin farm, to Microsoft for a total of $76 million. This number is three times higher than the original price the local government offered the Creuziger family in 2017 to transfer the land to Foxconn Technology Group. At that time, the Creuziger family refused and chose to wait for a better offer.
Notably, Microsoft’s payment to the Creuziger family is significantly larger than the current value of the land. According to valuation in early 2023, the Creuziger family’s land was priced at 174,200 USD but then increased to 598,400 USD thanks to some adjustments.
The land includes the Land of the Giants pumpkin farm and a 36,000 square meter corn maze 2, located next to a land area nearly 2.6 km wide 2 Another was purchased by Microsoft from the village of Mount Pleasant for $99.7 million. Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to build a regional data center campus with an expected investment of more than $1 billion.
The purchase is said to be a happy ending for the village after years of turmoil surrounding the investment from Foxconn. Two years earlier, Foxconn announced a significant scaling back of its promised $10 billion investment in Mount Pleasant to build a modern manufacturing factory.
Initial sources said that Microsoft plans to hire 200 employees at the Mount Pleasant data center and may add more than 460 seasonal employees. However, this number is much lower than the 13,000 jobs that Foxconn promised to the region in 2017.