Technology giant Microsoft Corp. has acquired 377 acres of farmland in Van Meter’s Vision Park, an area on the southeast part of the Dallas County community that a decade ago was identified for business development.

Van Meter’s city administrator and the executive director of the Greater Dallas County Development Alliance both confirmed that Microsoft plans to build a data center on the newly acquired land that is south of 360th Street.

Microsoft has been on a farmland-buying spree in the past year.

In late December, the Redmond, Wash.-based company bought 111 acres of farm ground in West Des Moines, immediately west of its Project Osmium data center at 5855 Kerry St.

In 2023, the company bought over 1,000 acres of agricultural land in Mount Pleasant, Wis., where it is developing a $1 billion data center, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In November, it bought 300 acres in New Albany, Ohio, where it also is expected to build a data center, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

As the race to dominate the development of artificial intelligence technology accelerates, companies like Microsoft are gobbling up land on which to build data centers, a building that stores computing infrastructure like servers, data storage drives and network equipment.

Rural regions, such as the Midwest, have become prime areas for new data center development.
Van Meter is a latest community identified by Microsoft for development activity.

Microsoft spokespeople declined to answer questions about specific development plans in Van Meter. However, Liz Faust, Van Meter’s city administrator, and Rachel Wacker, executive director of the Greater Dallas County Development Alliance, both confirmed in emails that Microsoft plans to build a data center on the land.

Faust and Wacker, in separate emails, wrote that they were unable to provide other details about the project because of nondisclosure agreements signed in late summer.

Specifically, Microsoft acquired 188 acres from Ronald and Debra Gebhardt, paying them $21.49 million, or over $114,500 an acre. Microsoft paid Land Concepts LLC $94,785 an acre, or $10.9 million for 115 acres. It paid JD Ventures II LLC $106,000 an acre, or $7.5 million for 74 acres.

The real estate transactions were recorded with the Dallas County Recorder.

Vision Park was designated a certified site by the Iowa Economic Development Authority in 2014. The site was among the first four industrial parks to receive the designation, which means the property is ready to be developed. The business park also is near an electrical substation. There are also transmission lines that run through the site “that can handle the wattage necessary to power technology infrastructure,” Wacker wrote in an email.

“The Alliance has been marketing the site for technology infrastructure since its inception because of its ideal topography and proximity to the necessary utility infrastructure,” Wacker wrote. “The site has experienced significant interest over the years with a significant uptick this past year. We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as the end user.”

Wacker wrote that the city of Van Meter has a plan to extend water and sanitary sewer lines and other utilities to the site.

“Each project requires different demands/loads on infrastructure such as water and sewer, and they need to fit each unique situation,” Wacker wrote. “For these reasons, communities often wait on improvements until an end user is identified and confirmed.”

Microsoft opened its first data center in Iowa in West Des Moines in 2012. It has since added four others and has plans for a sixth on the southwest corner of Veterans Parkway and Southwest 60th Street. Specifics about the project have not yet been released. A development agreement is expected to be made public by late in the first quarter of 2024, a West Des Moines city official said.