A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of their land, including a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft for a total of $76 million, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported. The local government initially provided a third of that sum to the Krutziger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, in 2017 as part of an agreement with Foxconn Technology Group. But the family refused, choosing to hold out and wait for a better offer.
The family's attorney, David Barnes, told the Milwaukee Business Journal: "Our family wishes the village and Microsoft the best, and they also hope that their privacy will be respected."
The land, which also includes the "Land of the Giants" pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, is adjacent to another 641 acres that 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 region, with plans to invest more than $1 billion.
All in all, the sale is a happy ending for the Village of Mount Pleasant after years of confusion and mixed signals from Foxconn. It comes just two years after Foxconn significantly scaled back its $10 billion investment commitment in Mount Pleasant that would have included a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.
According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, Microsoft plans to first hire 200 employees at the Mount Pleasant data center and add more than 460 jobs over time. But this is still a drop in the bucket compared to the 13,000 jobs Foxconn originally promised to bring to the region in 2017.