Microsoft has cut the number of buildings planned for the 791-acre Durand Avenue portion of its Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, data center campus to seven from nine, reducing the parcel's projected taxable value by about 24 percent, or nearly $1.9 billion, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported on Monday. The change applies to plans the village board approved in January as part of a $13.3 billion expansion by Microsoft Azure.
Official exterior photograph of Microsoft's completed Fairwater data center building in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.
As filed, the Durand Avenue campus was to hold nine data centers of roughly 580,000 square feet each plus a 96,000-square-foot office and storage building, across 5.2 million square feet with an estimated taxable value of $7.97 billion, according to Racine County Eye. A second approved campus on about 530 acres along International Drive called for six more data centers valued at $5.33 billion.
The village projected the two sites would add more than $76 million a year in property taxes once tax incremental district debt is retired, with $45.2 million of that coming from Durand Avenue.
The two buildings dropped from the plan account for roughly a quarter of that parcel's projected value.
Microsoft's first Mount Pleasant building, branded Fairwater, came online in June 2026 on 315 acres and employs close to 550 people, with a second building due in 2028, the company said. Microsoft estimates it will have spent $4.7 billion on local hyperscale construction between 2024 and 2028.
Local friction has grown alongside the buildout. Residents sued over noise from the operating campus in July, and neighbors have complained about construction dust, light and traffic. In September, Microsoft said it would redirect up to $5 million in annual village incentives back to Mount Pleasant and the Racine County Economic Development Corporation, money village officials said would help hold the property tax rate down, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
"We in the village government have heard the call for property tax relief," said David DeGroot, Mount Pleasant's village president. "That's why the village will dedicate every dollar of this funding to reduce Mount Pleasant's portion of the property tax burden on our residents starting immediately."
"When we announced that we would build a datacenter campus in the Village of Mount Pleasant in 2023, we made it clear that the community should benefit from our presence," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and vice chair.
Baxtel tracks 63 data center facilities in Wisconsin, operated by 33 providers, with 44 of them in the Milwaukee metro and six sites under construction there.
Ground-level view of facility construction and equipment at Microsoft's Mount Pleasant campus.
The revision is the clearest recent sign that a hyperscale pipeline is a moving target. Mount Pleasant built its tax incremental district around a promise once before, with Foxconn, and spent years absorbing the shortfall when the factories never arrived at the promised scale.
Communities that bank revenue on filed site plans are lending against a forecast. Microsoft's plans show that value can be re-cut in a single amendment, and the buildings that matter to a tax base are the ones permitted, powered and financed, not the ones on the drawing.
Related on Baxtel
- Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft: Fairwater MKE1
- Microsoft's First Data Center at Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin Campus Now Operational
