Microsoft is continuing to expand its holdings of undeveloped Mount Pleasant property, this week purchasing 166 acres for nearly $50 million.
The software developer bought 160 acres at 12123 Louis Sorenson Road from Peter Zenner Family Farm LLC for $43,462,548, according to state records. Microsoft also bought 5.9 acres, at 12800 Louis Sorenson Road, from Randall and Louise Borgardt for $7,339,000.
The two properties contribute to a site Microsoft is amassing north of the properties that the company has already announced plans for. The company has not released plans for this area and has not responded to requests for comment on the land acquisitions.
In addition to this week's purchases, since mid-August the company has purchased about 37.5 acres in Mount Pleasant from various property owners for a total of $10 million, according to state records. This came after the company had already purchased about
73 acres in early August,
173 acres in July and
32 acres in May.
When combined with the 1,030 acres of land that Microsoft purchased from the Village of Mount Pleasant and a private land owner in December, as well as 315 acres that the company had already owned, Microsoft owns a total of nearly 1,800 acres in Mount Pleasant.
[caption id="attachment_597026" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Microsoft's land holdings in Mount Pleasant as of Sept. 12, 2024. Map made using Google My Maps[/caption]
Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled plans to build
a $3.3 billion artificial intelligence data center in Mount Pleasant.
This followed an announcement made in March of 2023, when Microsoft announced plans to build a $1 billion data center on a 315-acre site, which was part of the Foxconn development area in Mount Pleasant. Microsoft is currently under construction on about 2.4 million square feet of data center space on this site.
Foxconn relinquished its development rights for the site in order for it to be sold by the village to Microsoft, for $50 million. Microsoft said it expected to have 200 employees in the first phase of its Mount Pleasant data center development.
Then later in the year, Microsoft moved to significantly expand those plans. In November of 2023, after construction had already begun on the initial Microsoft data center, local officials announced that the company planned to purchase an additional 1,030 acres of land for the data center development.
Village and county officials said at the time that Microsoft planned to invest “billions” of dollars over the next decade on buildings, support structures, systems and equipment.
Last month, Microsoft received initial approval from the Village of Mount Pleasant to begin mass grading on approximately 790 acres of that land, where it plans to build another 2 million square feet of data center space.
