Microsoft Just Paid $76 Million for a Wisconsin Pumpkin Farm -Gudstory

A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of its land, which includes a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft for a total of $76 million, reported milwaukee business journal, The local government initially offered a third of that amount to the Krueger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, in 2017 as part of a deal with Foxconn Technology Group. But the family refused, hoping for a better offer.

“The family wishes the village and Microsoft well and would appreciate the people’s privacy being respected,” said the family’s attorney, David Barnes. business journal,

The land, which also includes the Giant’s Pumpkin Farm land and a nine-acre corn maze, joins another 641 acres Microsoft purchased from the Village of Mount Pleasant – for a total of $99.7 million. Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to build a data center campus in the area, in which it plans to invest more than $1 billion.

All told, after several years of confusion and mixed signals from Foxconn, the sale is a happy ending for Village. It’s only been two years since Foxconn significantly scaled back its promised $10 billion investment in Mount Pleasant, which would have included a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.

milwaukee business journal The report says Microsoft plans to initially hire 200 employees at its Mount Pleasant data center — and could add as many as 460 jobs over time. But that would still be a fraction of the 13,000 jobs Foxconn originally promised the region in 2017.