Microsoft has acquired 600 acres of land outside Des Moines, Iowa, for a potential data center campus. The sale went through on October 8. The land purchase was revealed on October 12 during a meeting with local residents. I read the timing as a sign of how quickly this moved.
The property Microsoft purchased was rezoned from agricultural use to Eco Business Park District in June 2026, with the council waiving the usual additional readings of the ordinance.
At least 300 local residents attended the meeting. One resident was forcibly removed from the meeting. That's a lot of heat for a land deal.
Microsoft's land development manager, Jackie Nickolaus, told residents: "We have not even begun to design the building, so we have no idea what mechanical systems will be going into the buildings." Nickolaus estimated that it would take two to three years to design the campus before construction work would begin.
Nickolaus added that the data center is expected to serve cloud computing and data storage workloads, not AI training workloads.
The value of the land purchase agreement has not been shared. Another area of the Eco Business Park is offering 59 acres at $62,400 per acre.