Microsoft Corp. continues to expand its data center campus in Racine County – this time by purchasing a 70.9-acre site.
Microsoft paid $12.75 million for the mostly undeveloped farmland at 12734 Louis Sorenson Road in Mount Pleasant. The seller was the Thomas A. Hribar Sr. Revocable Trust, according to a new deed posted online by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
This latest transaction is part of a series of land purchases by the software developer since May.
Those previous purchases, including several in late July, total 205.1 acres on Louis Sorenson Road. Microsoft spent $33.9 million on those parcels, or about $165,285 per acre.
These additional properties will “support data center construction already underway in the region,” Bowen Wallace, vice president of data centers/Americas at Microsoft, said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in July.
The company bought just over 1,000 acres of nearby farmland in December to build data centers on. The three transactions totaled nearly $176 million.
The company paid the Town of Mount Pleasant $63.2 million for 400 acres at Braun Road and Durand Avenue. Microsoft also paid the town $36.5 million for 241 acres at County Highway H.
Eventually, the company bought 407 acres at Braun Road and Durand Avenue from Creuziger Farms Inc. for $76 million, according to state land records.
The land purchases on Louis Sorenson Road are located north of Durand Avenue/Wisconsin Highway 11. The majority of Microsoft’s development is initially planned south of this highway.
Microsoft plans to invest $3.3 billion in the first phase of its data center by 2026. Much of the investment is due to the growing demand for artificial intelligence applications.
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