VILLAGE OF GREENLEAF (WLUK) — Across the street from a potential artificial intelligence (AI) data center in southern Brown County sits LedgeStone Vineyard.
While no formal application has been filed with the village of Greenleaf, an unknown developer is trying to buy land from residents to build Northeast Wisconsin’s first AI data center.
The site in question is in the Greenleaf area, with Highways 32 and 57 on the east. A Google Maps satellite search shows roughly two dozen properties within the proposed area.
LedgeStone Vineyard’s owner Adam Magnuson said, “They will come in and secure land without even anyone knowing, right? They’ll make you sign a non-disclosure agreement. They’ll basically hide their activities until they have what they need in order to move forward. So, you have to be quick and you have to be organized in order to even understand what’s happening.”
According to the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, everything you do online — like social media, streaming shows and cloud storage — uses a data center. Rather than each company having its own computers, these facilities house many in one place.
Tricia Braun with WDCC said these data centers help communities grow.
“Obviously, there is a very significant tax benefit to the community that it is going into. There are some jobs inside the facility. While those are not many, there are dozens, if not hundreds of other jobs that are helping build and maintain the facility that even stay on for several years after the construction is done,” Braun said.
LedgeStone Vineyard opposes a data center being built in its neighborhood and took to social media to spread awareness.
“We much prefer posting about delicious things our kitchen is coming out with,” LedgeStone Vineyard owner Katrina Magnuson said. “It just felt like an opportunity because these things happen so quickly… I think it’s just kind of nice we have a platform to bring people together.”
Just down the road sits Kyle Schwalheim’s 36-acre property, which he told FOX 11 is irreplaceable — even for the $1.8 million he was offered.
“Yeah, I might get a big offer to leave my property, but I got neighbors right across the street that aren’t getting offers, and they’re going to be stuck here with that — decreased property values and the other impacts. It doesn’t sit right with me,” said Schwalheim.
The Vineyard says they are concerned about what could be lost and how their community might change.
If you would like to attend LedgeStone Vineyard’s informational session, it’s being held Monday at 6 p.m. at Gnarly Cedar Brewing. The goal is to help educate on data center destruction to the environment and communities.
The village of Greenleaf is holding a town meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Wrightstown Town Hall.
Since reporting on the Greenleaf proposal Monday, FOX 11 has learned land around the border of Manitowoc County and Kewaunee County is also being considered for a data center. FOX 11 spoke with Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a company that finds and develops land for data centers. They said they are in the midst of evaluating multiple parcels of land in the area to build a data center.
Currently, there are no official proposals in place, and a more specific location has not been determined. Cloverleaf is in the process of talking with landowners about potentially buying property. They tell us the area is being considered because of its strong electrical infrastructure.
It’s not clear how large the data center will be, but Cloverleaf said it would be a minimum of a couple hundred acres.
Wisconsin is becoming an increasingly popular location for data centers. Work on a Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant is currently underway, with plans to open this year. Microsoft also tried to establish a data center in nearby Caledonia, but that project was abandoned in October after it received intense community backlash. A data center has also been proposed by Quality Technology Services, or QTS, in Dane County.