Tech giant wants to build a new data center there: Microsoft will pay the family $76 million for a pumpkin farm

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The Creuziger family of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, will end this year with a huge increase in their bank account. She has just sold 407 hectares of her land, on which the Creuzigers ran a pumpkin farm with a large corn maze, among other things, to technology giant Microsoft.

The price tag is impressive: as the “Milwaukee Business Journal” reports, the deal cost a total of $76 million! Microsoft was apparently eager to take possession of the land and also acquired the 641 hectares of land adjacent to the pumpkin farm.

$1 billion for new data center

The reason for the buying frenzy: Microsoft has big plans in Wisconsin. As news platform ‘The Verge’ reports, the company wants to build a new data center campus in the area. The total investment for this is expected to be approximately one billion dollars.

To put its plans into practice, Microsoft apparently spares no effort or expense. The company does this very cleverly by making such an incredible offer to the land owners that they simply cannot refuse.

For example, the Creuziger family’s properties would have originally been worth about $600,000. Microsoft then paid 127 times as much!

Foxconn’s investment turned out to be an empty promise

It is not self-evident that the sale apparently went so smoothly. In 2017, Taiwanese Apple supplier Foxconn announced a $10 billion investment in Wisconsin. A newly built factory for the production of televisions and other technical devices should have created 13,000 new jobs.

However, the project ended in disaster. No one in Wisconsin has ever seen any of the announced $10 billion. Foxconn drastically reduced its plans. Ultimately, only a few hundred workers worked in the largely empty halls.

“We feel honored”

Now Microsoft is making its next attempt. Initially, the company wants to employ 200 people in the data center. In the long term, the workforce will be expanded to 460 employees.

There is great joy in Wisconsin about the deal. “We are honored and excited to have Microsoft in our community and will continue to support the company for years to come,” a spokesperson for the economic development organization Milwaukee 7 said in a statement. (ced)

Source: Blick