Wisconsin Village Residents Report Lucrative Land Offers for Potential Data Center Development
January 08, 2026
A wave of significant land acquisition offers has swept through the village of Greenleaf, Wisconsin, signaling potential new data center development in a region that is increasingly attracting major digital infrastructure projects. The push for land in this small community, located south of Green Bay, underscores the expanding geographic footprint of the data center industry as it seeks sites with available power and land to support growing demand, particularly from artificial intelligence workloads. According to a report by local news outlet Fox 11, residents in Greenleaf have been contacted by an unnamed company with offers to purchase their land at prices ranging from $50,000 to as high as $120,000 per acre. The targeted area is bounded by Highway 57 to the east, the East River to the west, Mallard Road to the north, and Fair Road to the south. One resident, who spoke to Fox 11, stated the offer was made via a phone call and that they were informed some neighbors had already agreed to sell. The identity of the developer and the ultimate end-user for the proposed facility remain unclear. Officials from the Village of Greenleaf have been contacted to clarify if any formal applications or inquiries have been submitted. While Greenleaf itself does not currently host notable data center infrastructure, the broader state of Wisconsin has emerged as a key growth market. Major technology firms are making substantial investments in the region. In a landmark move last November, Meta announced plans for a $1 billion data center campus spanning over 700,000 square feet in Beaver Dam, a project that has since faced a lawsuit from environmental advocates concerned about its energy demand. Furthermore, a separate consortium involving OpenAI, Oracle, and Vantage is developing a large-scale 'Stargate' data center campus in Port Washington, which is slated to deliver close to a gigawatt of total capacity across four facilities. The aggressive land offers in Greenleaf, if linked to a major development, would represent a further northward expansion of Wisconsin's data center cluster, which has traditionally been concentrated around Milwaukee. Such a project would bring significant capital investment and tax revenue but also raises familiar questions about land use, community impact, and strain on local power and water resources that have accompanied similar developments nationwide. Source: datacenterdynamics
