Microsoft just paid $76 million for a Wisconsin pumpkin farm

The tech giant plans to use the Creuziger family’s land to build a multi-building data center, all part of a $1 billion investment in the village of Mount Pleasant.

A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of their land, which includes a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft — for a total of $76 million, reported the Milwaukee Business Journal. 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 family wishes the village and Microsoft well, and they would appreciate people respecting their privacy,” the family’s attorney David Barnes told the Business Journal. 

The land, which also includes the Land of the Giants pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, neigbhors 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.

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