Hundreds of acres of farmland and homes in between will be cleared on the edge of Port Washington off Highway 43.
It's the future home of a much-debated data center complex, which will be part of OpenAI’s Stargate expansion. Crews plan to construct four data centers on 500 of the 672 acres of land that Vantage has acquired.
According to Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke, more than 100 properties were purchased. Some were farms; others were homes.
David DeVooght wants to save at least a dozen of those buildings.
On a recent Saturday, DeVooght backed his red semi onto one of the properties Vantage bought. The people who lived there for 25 years already moved out of their two-story brick home. Their meticulously cared for bushes and trees still stand guard.
DeVooght was getting ready to save a pair of barns, beginning with the smaller of the two, a pole barn the size of a four-car garage. They'll lift and move it intact.
His crew came to the property a few days earlier to prep the building. DeVooght describes the process. “What we first do is set up our rigging on the inside, attach our equipment to each pole on the inside of the building, and we gradually add a little bit of pressure to raise everything," DeVooght says. "Then we cut all the poles off at the bottom. Once the poles are all lifted, then we go up and we install our wheels."
When the pole barn reaches its destination, the structure will be anchored to a new concrete slab waiting for it.
A project like this requires additional preparation. DeVooght coordinated with the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office. The Ozaukee County Highway Commissioner issued permits that DeVooght needed to travel the county roads.
“This one is a fairly simple move. Nice wide roads, good county roads to move on. Good county to move in,” DeVooght says.
The next day at 9:00 p.m., the barn was scheduled to be escorted to its new home. DeVooght says most moves happen at night when there’s less traffic.
“We’ll have a couple of our own private escorts (in) front and back of the load. And then we’ll also have the sheriff department out here assisting us on the road,” DeVooght says.
The barn won't go far. It's heading just six miles northwest. But it will take nearly two hours to get there.
DeVooght says the owner of the barn is passing it down.
“The father owned this property. He was bought out (by Vantage) and they decided to give it to the son, and now they’re repurposing it,” DeVooght says.
The son plans to use the barn as a machine shop.
The move comes with a price tag of $8,500. That’s a pretty good deal, according to DeVooght. He says it would cost more than twice that to build a barn from scratch.
DeVooght says moving taller buildings like the two-story house on this property would be more complicated and more expensive. The move would require navigating utility wires along the way.
“You have to reach out to (the) electric company, Spectrum you know, any kind of communication (company) to get prices on that to take down the wires. Some they take down, some they lift, some they put on the ground, you drive over,” he says.
Sometimes DeVooght cuts houses in half to get rid of the cost and hassle associated with negotiating power lines. “That way when you make that cut and lift that roof off there and attach that back together, you’re just kind of reconstructing and tying it right in,” he says.
DeVooght wishes he could work with more people like the ones paying to have their barn moved.
He says he realizes picking up and moving with your buildings might be the last thing on folks’ minds when they’re bought out for a big development. “It is a fast-moving process when the data center finally gets their approval, so I know there isn’t a lot of time,” he says.
DeVooght thinks if he had the chance to talk to the right person with the Vantage project, he could convince the company to give residents more time to save a few more homes and buildings.
DeVooght has moved houses, apartment buildings, an old granary and other historic buildings. He does about 60 projects a year.
Moving and reusing is more than his livelihood. It’s a family tradition. He got his start by learning from his dad. Now, DeVooght works with his own son.
DeVought calls it passion with a purpose.
“To me it would be nice to see more (buildings) saved because we throw so much away. And we have a housing issue. There’s so many buildings. They tear a building down every day. We could save some of them and they could be repurposed for housing. So it’s not only that I benefit from the moving, the community itself does for the rest of its life,” he says.
In Port Washington, DeVooght has a few more potential customers. He’s talking with someone up the road about moving some houses and other buildings.
As for the second, larger barn on this property, DeVooght says if it doesn’t find a home nearby, he’ll take it to his land and then find a home for it. He says somebody will enjoy the barn's second life. “It’s just another opportunity to save another building,” DeVooght says.
