Microsoft is growing its Racine County footprint again, this time in the Village of Sturtevant. The company has bought 70 acres there from United Natural Foods, which announced in March that it would close its facility at 3138 County Road H and lay off more than 400 workers.
State records and the Racine Economic Development Corp. put the purchase price at $70 million, in a deed posted online by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue on Oct. 20. The property includes a 445,133-square-foot building, according to the real estate site LoopNet.
In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company is considering the next phase of its data center investment in Racine County and looks forward to early, open conversations about a possible expansion into Sturtevant, next to its existing holdings in Mount Pleasant. The size and design of any Sturtevant data center have not been determined.
Microsoft has already finished one large hyperscale data center in Mount Pleasant and is building a second one beside it. The company has been in contact with Sturtevant officials and says it is in the early stages of working out which local ordinances and applications a conversion of the site into a data center would require.
The Sturtevant purchase is one of several moving pieces for the company in the county. Microsoft is also evaluating 80 acres across three parcels owned by the Village of Mount Pleasant and Foxconn Technology Group, and it recently revised its Mount Pleasant campus plan from nine data centers down to seven. In July, a group of Sturtevant residents sued Microsoft in federal court, in a case that cited comments and complaints sent to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
