Gov. Tony Evers signed into law this week Wisconsin Act 16, a piece of legislation that creates tax increment district (TID) exemptions for ongoing data center projects in Port Washington and Beaver Dam.
The bill gives Port Washington and Beaver Dam additional resources to support large-scale data center projects while maintaining flexibility for future growth and development in other parts of the cities.
“This bill will help these two communities compete for new data centers, bolster our local communities, and build upon our work to build a 21st-century workforce and economy,” said Evers in a Tuesday announcement.
Wisconsin Act 16 specifies that for TID Number 5 in Port Washington and TID Number 10 in Beaver Dam, the 12% equalized value limit does not apply if all project costs are related to a data center project within the district.
Typically, the equalized value of property within a TID, plus the increment of all existing districts, cannot exceed 12% of the total equalized value of taxable property within a municipality.
The legislation also mandates that both districts only include project costs directly related to the construction of data centers. It prohibits them from being amended in the future to include unrelated costs.
Vantage Data Centers, a growing developer of hyperscale data center campuses based in Denver, plans to build a data center complex in Port Washington on potentially up to 1,900 acres. Earlier this year, Houston-based Cloverleaf Infrastructure secured land and power contracts as well as zoning and annexation agreements for the project site, which is bordered by I-43 on its south and east sides, Dixie Road to the north and the Ozaukee Interurban Trail to the west.
A large-scale data center of up to 520 acres is also planned in Beaver Dam. Tech giant Meta has been linked to that project, according to a Bloomberg report.
