Large data center may be coming to Port Washington

Southeast Wisconsin might soon be home to another data center — this time in Port Washington.

Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a Houston- and Seattle-based developer, is working with the City of Port Washington to put a data center on over 1,000 acres of farmland north of the city. That land was previously in the sights of a microchip maker, but that project did not move forward.

Cloverleaf Chief Development Officer Aaron Bilyeu came to Port Washington Tuesday night to speak to the city’s Common Council.

He said his company prepares sites for data center construction by buying up property, connecting it to the power grid and selling it on to a client like Google or Apple.

“As I like to say — and certain people like to make fun of me for — it’s quiet, dark rooms and servers going blinky-blinky all day,” Bilyeu said.

He said most data centers employ between 50 and 100 people in office jobs.

“The only time people go into those server halls is when you get a hard drive failure or something like that,” he said.

He said he couldn’t give a specific acreage or wattage for the data center yet. But he said many modern data centers require 350 megawatts. That’s enough to power 280,000 households.

The entire city of Milwaukee has 231,000 households.

A Microsoft data center campus now under construction in Mt. Pleasant is expected to use 450 megawatts of power when complete, according to a company spokesperson.

Artificial intelligence drives the growing energy needs of data centers. NPR reported in July that the power needs of AI tools have increased Google’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent over the last five years, and that asking AI chatbot ChatGPT one question is equivalent to burning a lightbulb for 20 minutes.

Mayor supports project

At the Common Council meeting, Port Washington mayor Ted Neitzke IV said that the potential data center’s advantages “far outweigh the cons” for his city.

He said the loss of local manufacturers — like the lawnmower-maker Simplicity — have made the city’s revenue too dependent on residential property taxes. He said restoring a “greater developmental mix” would shift the tax burden back to commercial landowners.

Neitzke told the Ozaukee Press that the city would consider creating a tax-increment financing district to pay for sewer and water extensions to the data center.

Development would require annexation

There is one more player in the development story: the Town of Port Washington.

The potential construction area — between I-43, Dixie Road and the Ozaukee Interurban Trail — and its current landowners are within the town’s borders.

Development would require annexation by the city, which can’t happen until the municipalities’ current land agreement expires in December 2025, or both parties agree to cancel it early.

At its meeting on Monday, the town board delayed taking any action on the border agreement, TMJ4 reported.

Chair Mike Didier did not respond to a WPR request for comment on Thursday.

Bilyeu said many landowners within the potential site are already under contract for a sale.

“We have a few that we’re still having conversations with,” he said.

If the data center is built, it would join a proposed center in Kenosha County as well as Microsoft’s planned data center campus in Mount Pleasant. Construction on a portion of the Microsoft project is underway, but the company recently announced it was pausing work on another phase of the development.