PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — Steel beams are set to arrive next week at the site of a $15 billion data center campus under construction north of downtown Port Washington, near Interstate 43.
TMJ4 was the first TV crew to report from the massive construction site Wednesday, getting an exclusive look at the progress more than two months into construction.
The initial campus, developed by Vantage Data Centers for Oracle and Open AI, will span roughly 700 acres and include four buildings. It is expected to house 1,000 permanent jobs split between the companies. Further expansions could take the center closer to 2,000 acres.
Watch: TMJ4 gets exclusive look at $15B Port Washington data center campus construction
Edwin Van Velzen, senior vice president for construction at Vantage Data Centers, said the scale of the project is unlike anything he has seen before.
"I use the word unprecedented because this is one of the biggest sites I've worked on so far," Van Velzen said. "Today, it's like 700 (workers) because we're mainly still on the ground, but when the buildings arise, it will be a couple of thousand."
Cranes are already in place for the steel, and Van Velzen said all four buildings are being constructed at the same time. Construction has been operating mostly around the clock since breaking ground in mid-December.
"We are all online. We all do streaming, so that's why this industry is growing," Van Velzen said.
The project is as ambitious as it is controversial. For more than a year, TMJ4 has been attending public meetings related to the project and spoken with neighbors about a variety of concerns and complaints related to the development.
Their complaints include the size and timing of property tax decreases for nearby residents, construction traffic, rolling dust from the former farmland, the campus' potential impact on local utility bills. and the expansion of the local power grid to power it.
The project has also spawned a web of legal disputes over the tax increment district that will fund the campus' infrastructure as well as the city's approval process.
When asked what tools a town of 13,000 has to hold a development of this scale accountable, Van Velzen said the company shares those concerns.
"Yeah, I'm glad you're concerned, because we're concerned. We want to be a good neighbor," Van Velzen said.
Vantage says its data center will not carry the same problems seen with older developments from other companies. The company says it is conducting daily reviews with neighbors and has hired Port Washington residents, including Kevin Chandler, the company's director of state and local public policy.
"The project is already generating revenue and economic activity locally," Chandler said. "That's only going to increase during the operations period."
Still, concerns persist. In Wednesday's State of the Union address, President Trump called on tech companies to pay their own way to power their facilities. How that arrangement will work for this project is still being discussed by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.
After steel arrives on site next week, crews will begin work on the concrete walls.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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