Microsoft Corp. paid more than $34 million to acquire a site in Kenosha where it plans to build another data center.
Local officials
announced Monday that the company had purchased about 240 acres northwest of I-94 and Highway 142 that has been earmarked for a data center development.
State property records posted Tuesday revealed the sale price of $34.81 million for five properties purchased by Microsoft from private land owners, which breaks down to about $142,000 per acre.
For comparison, when Microsoft expanded its land holdings in nearby Mount Pleasant by 1,000 acres at the end of 2023, it paid about $176 million, or about $176,000 per acre.
The City of Kenosha late last year approved plans for
four data center buildings there, each a single-story 250,000-square-foot building, plus a utility substation on the site.
"
We can confirm that this announcement is the latest example of our commitment to the people of Wisconsin, and our investments, which are designed to strengthen the role of Southeast Wisconsin as a hub for AI-powered economic activity, innovation, and job creation. This announcement builds on Wisconsin’s heritage of business innovation and Microsoft’s history of investment in the state," Microsoft said in a statement on the project.
Microsoft’s Kenosha project is in addition to the company’s
$3.3 billion data center development in Mount Pleasant.
The site for the Kenosha data center campus is about seven miles southwest of where Microsoft is building its data center campus in Mount Pleasant. The Kenosha site is northeast of Burlington Road (state Highway 142) and 136th Avenue (county Highway MB), just west of I-94. The I-94 and Highway 142 area has been a hotbed of development including numerous distribution centers for Uline and Amazon, plus the Mars Cheese Castle.
[caption id="attachment_600660" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Site (in blue) of data center campus planned in Kenosha.[/caption]
