Microsoft has started to spell out details of its plans for a major expansion of its promise to build a new data center in Racine County's Village of Mount Pleasant. Company officials briefed village board members Monday night.
The technology company based in Redmond, WA., is proposing to pay the village $100 million to buy about 630 acres, including some of the land the Foxconn Corporation promised to use when then-President Donald Trump and then-Governor Scott Walker cut a deal with the Taiwan-based company six years ago.
Microsoft also wants to buy a nearby 400 acre farm. Put together with a land deal the company made with the village earlier this year, Village Attorney Alan Marcuvitz told the board 1,346 acres would be developed.
"I'm a city boy. So, I had to have people explain to me what 1,346 acres really amounts to. And I was reminded that there are 640 acres in a square mile. So, 1,346 acres is more than two square miles," Marcuvitz said.
Downtown Milwaukee is between two and three square miles.
Microsoft Director of Land Acquistion A.J. Steinbrecher painted part of the picture of what the data complex would resemble.
"The data center building houses thousands of computer servers and data storage devices connected to the internet. These buildings are similar in size and appearance to a distribution warehouse which houses this compute power," Steinbrecher told the board.
But Steinbrecher said the master plan for the complex isn't complete. That's even though Mount Pleasant and Racine County are being asked to approve the land deals by the end of the month.
Steinbrecher and other Microsoft representatives didn't hang around Monday night to answer media questions. Village officials did. Marcuvitz said he has faith in Microsoft.
"We're not talking about some company that was formed three weeks ago in Wyoming or something. We're talking about one of the largest corporate enterprises in the country. The last time I looked out of my own curiosity as to what their profit margin was, publicly, it was over $12 billion a year in profit. So, we're dealing with one of the mega-companies of the world," Marcuvitz told reporters.
But Marcuvitz added that if company plans change, and Microsoft doesn't meet its construction targets, Mount Pleasant would have the option to buy the land back at this year's prices.
No village board member criticized the Microsoft proposal during the meeting.
