Foxconn promised $10 billion
and 13,000 jobs.
Microsoft actually delivered.

The village board that once bet everything on Foxconn found redemption in Microsoft. The approval process was notably smoother than the Foxconn era — no contentious public hearings, no eminent domain battles, no political drama. Microsoft's zero-subsidy approach removed the most volatile element from the equation.

Microsoft's playbook here is a masterclass in how to enter a community that was burned by a previous developer. Zero subsidies removed the political toxicity. Union labor secured organized labor support. Education partnerships (AI lab, Datacenter Academy) gave the community tangible skill-building assets. Environmental restoration addressed the ecological damage from Foxconn-era construction. Every element of the community benefits package directly countered a specific Foxconn-era failure.

WEDC's role in this story is primarily historical. The agency that brokered the largest foreign-company subsidy deal in U.S. history watched Microsoft arrive and ask for nothing. The contrast is instructive: the Foxconn deal required $3B in incentives to attract a manufacturing commitment that never materialized. Microsoft's $13.3B commitment came with no state subsidies at all.

Foxconn's Mount Pleasant project became the textbook case of subsidy-chasing economic development gone wrong. The company's serial downsizing — from Gen 10.5 LCD panels to coffee kiosks — destroyed public trust in the mega-project model. But Foxconn's failure created the conditions for Microsoft's success: $1.2B in infrastructure, ready to go, with a community desperate for a credible tenant.

The taxpayer position is the unresolved tension in this redemption story. Microsoft's presence is vastly better than an empty field, but the math doesn't fully close. Infrastructure built for 13,000 manufacturing workers now serves 2,000 data center employees. The TIF district debt service depends on property tax generation from the Microsoft campus — which is substantial but was not the fiscal model the original bonds were structured around.

The union labor commitment was strategically brilliant. It secured support from organized labor — a powerful constituency in Wisconsin politics — and directly addressed one of the Foxconn-era grievances. When 2,300 union members are drawing paychecks from a project, community opposition struggles to gain traction.