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A Wisconsin family has agreed to sell 407 acres of their land, which includes a local pumpkin farm attraction, to Microsoft \u2014 for a total of $76 million, reported the Milwaukee Business Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> The local government initially offered the Creuziger family in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin about a third of that sum in 2017 as a part of an agreement with the Foxconn Technology Group. But the family refused, opting to hold out for a better offer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe family wishes the village and Microsoft well, and they would appreciate people respecting their privacy,\u201d the family\u2019s attorney David Barnes told the Business Journal<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Microsoft\u2019s payout is significantly larger than the land\u2019s current valuation. The Creuziger family\u2019s land was originally valued at $174,200 in 2023, but then rose to $598,400 after making improvements, Mount Pleasant\u2019s village assessor Dan McHugh told The Verge<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The land, which also includes the Land of the Giants<\/a> pumpkin farm and a nine-acre corn maze, neighbors another 641 acres of land purchased by Microsoft from the village of Mount Pleasant \u2014 for a total of $99.7 million. The end goal for Microsoft is to build a data center campus<\/a> in the area, in which it plans to invest over $1 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n All told, the sale is a happy ending for the village, after several years of confusion and mixed signals<\/a> from Foxconn. It\u2019s only been two years since Foxconn drastically scaled back<\/a> its promised $10 billion investment in Mount Pleasant, which would have included a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Milwaukee Business Journal<\/em> reported that Microsoft plans to initially hire 200 employees<\/a> at its Mount Pleasant data center \u2014 and could add over 460 jobs over time. But it\u2019ll still be a fraction of the 13,000 jobs<\/a> that Foxconn originally promised the area back in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n