STURTEVANT — Microsoft Corp. is set to hold a public information session on its planned $1 billion data center project this Thursday (June 22).
The session runs from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Gateway Technical College SC Johnson iMET Center, 2320 Renaissance Blvd., Sturtevant.
Representatives from the company will be on hand to provide information and answer questions. The informal open house setting means that interested residents are free to drop by to learn about the project.
Microsoft, a multinational technology corporation with annual sales of about $198 billion, completed the $50 million purchase of 315 acres of land from the Village of Mount Pleasant in May. The site is in the east section of a tax increment district that was created for the Foxconn development.
A data center houses computing and networking equipment that are used to process and store information (i.e. data). Microsoft has about 200 data centers around the world, according to the company’s website. Microsoft’s closest data center to Wisconsin is located at Northlake, Ill., just west of Chicago.
Project scope, jobs
The Milwaukee Business Journal reported last Friday that Microsoft plans to invest about $1 billion on the first phase of the development project and create 200 jobs “with 460 more over time.” Microsoft will seek site approval on 215 acres of the property. The site plan goes before the Mount Pleasant Plan Commission for review on Wednesday.
According to The Business Journal report, the site plan for the first phase includes the footprint for a data center running parallel along 90th Street, an electrical substation and a central utility plant. There is also a 365-space parking lot.
Property taxes generated by the Microsoft project will be used by Mount Pleasant to pay off debt on the infrastructure for the 2,240 acres of land prepared for Foxconn, The Business Journal reported. The property taxes will also provide incentive payments to Microsoft that would reach $50 million by 2047. That matches the price the company paid the village for the land.
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