Foxconn’s land in Wisconsin may finally be used for a meaningful technology project — but not by Foxconn.
Last week, the village council in Mount Pleasant voted to allow Microsoft to build a data center on land previously cleared of the faboxconn LCD fab that never arrived. Microsoft will buy the land for $50 million, some of which will be used to compensate Foxconn for launching rights to the land. It doesn’t look like Foxconn will play any role in operating the data center itself.
The announcement came days before an election in which board members narrowly defeated rivals critical of the Foxconn deal.
Foxconn spokesperson Rusty Schultz declined to comment on the record, instead pointing to an unattributed statement published by other outlets that vaguely indicated that Foxconn partnered with Microsoft in some way.
Microsoft will be eligible for $5 million in tax credits each year
Microsoft will build a $1 billion data center on a 315-acre parcel previously allocated to Foxconn, with construction to begin no later than 2026, according to the development agreement. The project will help the village pay off some of the debt it took on to prepare the site for the LCD factory which was not built by Foxconn. Microsoft will be eligible for $5 million in tax credits annually based on the improvements it makes on the ground. Neither Microsoft nor Village has said how many jobs will be created, but given the highly automated nature of data centers, it’s likely very few.
Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith is from Appleton, Wisconsin, and the company has significant investments in the state, most notably in the Titletown Tech project in Green Bay. But the company is silent about its plans for Mount Pleasant.
Our data center campus investment plans with the Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County are part of Microsoft’s long-term commitment to local communities in Wisconsin. “We look forward to our work there,” Frank Shaw, the company’s subsidiary, said in a statement. The company declined to add any additional information or make available anyone to answer questions about the project.
The village council viewed Microsoft’s arrival as vindication of the Foxconn deal. “Microsoft was drawn to this site because it is primed for development,” Village President David DeGroot said in an emailed statement.
DeGroot was facing a tough challenge for re-election from Kelly Gallagher, an outspoken critic of the Foxconn deal. Gallaher was running with Kim Mahoney, another pundit and disapproval of Foxconn after the village cleared the area with eminent domain. Mahoney finally settled with the Village for $950,000 and moved in late last year. Both Gallagher and Mahoney lost their shows this week by hundreds of votes.
Foxconn has shifted again and again in the five years since then-President Trump announced plans to build a 20-million-square-foot LCD manufacturing unit dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” After it quickly became clear that an LCD factory made no economic sense, Foxconn announced that it would build robotic coffee kiosks, servers, and other ideas that never came to fruition. During the height of the pandemic, it announced it would make ventilators in Wisconsin with Medtronic, another plan that went nowhere. Internally, Foxconn has sought everything from exporting dairy products to fish farming to capitalize on its investment in the state. Foxconn has always insisted that the large glass ball on the site is actually a data center, although it is actually an office space and a conference center.
Foxconn insists the large glass orb on the site is actually a data center, even though it’s actually office space
In 2021, Wisconsin and Foxconn agreed to reduce their contract to reflect a much smaller project than the original. Under the new contract, Foxconn aims to create at least 1,454 jobs, instead of 13,000, and the state is at risk of getting credits worth $80 million instead of $3 billion. Foxconn has qualified for nearly $40 million in those credits to date and employed 768 people at the end of 2022, according to Associated Press. What exactly these people do is still not clear. Foxconn said it makes servers, but also denied access to local journalists.
The disaster proved costly for Mount Pleasant, as dozens of homes were bulldozed in order to clear land for the project. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation earlier this year, the debt the Village has taken on amounts to 500 percent of its operating revenue. Village taxpayers also paid $167 million to various contractors and vendors, including Claude Lewis, the politically connected consultant overseeing the project for $28,000 a month.