Microsoft says it won't go "where people don't want us."
When Caledonia residents voiced their concerns last year about a proposed Microsoft data center, it caused the company to change course – with some local officials hoping for a better location there.
But Caledonia is officially not getting a Microsoft data center.
“I’m not aware of anything we’re looking at in Caledonia,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“It doesn’t make sense to go where people don’t want us," Smith said on Jan. 13. "But I do think it’s our opportunity to have the conversations in a variety of other places about what we would hope to bring to a community.”
Microsoft is finishing a data center in neighboring Mount Pleasant and expanding its campus with a second data center to be completed nearby in the coming years.
Smith called the experience with Caledonia a “important watershed moment for us.”
“It was a message that said we need to communicate differently,” Smith said.
“I understand why we went about what we did in Caledonia the way we did," he said. "It reflected the last 15 years of our industry. People were buying land under non-disclosure agreements because the moment they said who they were, the price skyrocketed. But that will not work for the future.”
For months, Caledonia residents and some elected officials only knew the potential development as “Project Nova.” It wasn’t until later when Microsoft was revealed as the company behind the development.
“The price of that was a cloak that kept us from being transparent with the community and we need to be transparent,” Smith said. “We need to be more transparent, not just when we’re buying land.”
'They thought it'd be a cake walk for them'
Village President Tom Weatherson agreed with Smith that Microsoft should have been more upfront with local residents.
“They brought in a third party; they didn’t come in as Microsoft,” Weatherston said. “To me, that was the very first mistake is they hired another firm out of Waukesha to come in and (Microsoft) wanted to be anonymous. That was a huge mistake on their part. Maybe that’s why Brad is making a change.”
“I could be wrong, but I got that feeling that they thought it’d be a cake walk for them and they were surprised by the resistance,” Weatherston said.
Weatherston said he tried to help the find a new location for Microsoft.
“We have a couple of industrial parks that would have been very welcoming," Weatherston said. And there’s a farm on the southern edge of Caledonia that’s for sale, it would have been perfect for them and at that time I was told that Caledonia, in their business opinion, was completely off the table no matter what."
“The citizens here just didn’t want it," he said.
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