Even for a guy like Ron Brisbois, whose job is to cultivate prosperity, a data center proposed for Wisconsin’s Driftless Area was too big to imagine.
Nothing like this had come along in Brisbois’ quarter-century as economic development director in rural Grant County. An up to $2 billion project spanning 500 acres would be at least three times larger — in dollars and space — than any development in the county.
The construction contracts. Dozens of new permanent jobs. Millions of extra tax revenue for schools and local government. This is what economic development is all about.
For months, the out-of-state developers pitching the data center spoke repeatedly with Brisbois. They toured the county in Wisconsin’s southwest corner. They visited Madison to discuss details with state officials.
Their talk was big.
But Brisbois never dug into the developers’ backgrounds.
Then, as if someone flipped a switch, they stopped returning his calls.
Now, a project that would have been historically transformational — and was already highly controversial — is all but dead.
Drawing on two months of behind-the-scenes interviews Wisconsin Watch conducted with Brisbois, here’s the behind-the-scenes story of the rise and fall of a data center proposal.
Out for a drive
Brisbois first heard about the data center last fall. A colleague told him the developers were scouting northern Illinois for a cryptocurrency project when they drove across the border into Grant County and looked up to see the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line. It delivers electricity along a 100-mile corridor from Dubuque County, Iowa, through Cassville in Grant County, to Dane County.
The developers quickly surmised that with access to the kind of power that artificial intelligence data centers desperately need, the town of Cassville (population 400) could be ideal.
“There’s a chunk of power there, Ron, and we need to grab it before someone else does,” Brisbois recalled the developers saying. “If we don’t, someone else will.”
Brisbois’ reaction: “Well, why shouldn’t we?”
The median $67,000 household income among Grant County’s 52,000 residents is $10,000 below the state median; 12% live in poverty.
Brisbois said he initially felt curiosity, not excitement, “because I never would have thought a project like that would look at this area.”
The two-man team included a businessman from the Northeast and a technical expert from the South.
Even now, citing a custom of confidentiality common to economic development proposals, Brisbois won’t identify them.
The man for the job?
Early in his career, not long after working in economic development for the former state Department of Commerce, Brisbois yearned to bring jobs and industry to his home area.
Married with two grown daughters, Brisbois, 60, grew up on a southwest Wisconsin dairy farm and still does a little farming of his own. After six years in the state job, he became executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp. in 1999. A resident of Ithaca in Richland County, which borders Grant, he’s a former Ithaca School Board member and currently serves on the town board.
“I’ve had multiple staff, people from multiple governors tell me, ‘Ron, we love what you do, but we like to see these projects done in Milwaukee, Madison or the Fox Valley,’” he said.
“And that’s because of votes. And I get it. I’m not naive. I mean, people want to get reelected. They want to have their impact. And I appreciate it. But things like that really motivated me. It’s like, what could I do out there (in the Driftless)?”
First meeting, excitement builds
Brisbois began work in earnest on the project Nov. 6. He gave the developers a book of maps, noting where the transmission line runs. He emailed Grant County Board chair Bob Keeney, saying he would meet the next week with a “data center prospect who is flying in from Rhode Island.”
Keeney called the news exciting.
“My meeting is the first of the day for them,” Brisbois told Keeney. “Then they meet with the energy reps. Land is my primary assignment, plus they want to know about the political feel for such a project.”
The meeting, requested by the developers, was at Scenic Rivers Energy Cooperative in Lancaster, the county seat. Because of a storm on the East Coast, they drove instead of flying.
“It was about a less than a half-hour meeting,” Brisbois recalled. “And I just said, ‘What are you guys thinking?’ And that’s where they started talking about a hyperscale project.”
“It was more of just feeling them out,” he added. “OK, what scale? And that’s where they talked about $1 billion to $2 billion. And they started to talk in the 500-acre range.”
They understood there would be a lot of work to confirm that enough power would be available.
The developers were also considering sites in Indiana and North Dakota. They didn’t ask about financial incentives, but wondered what the public might think about a data center. Brisbois told them residents would want to know about jobs, but he emphasized more local tax revenue. The developers had seen a headline in the Grant County Herald Independent about local schools and municipalities struggling with budgets.
Momentum built after more conversations with the developers.
Brisbois began to let himself feel excited.
“I was (thinking): OK, there’s potential here.”
Going public, progress continues
Brisbois went public a month after the first meeting. He announced Dec. 3 at the annual meeting of the Grant County Economic Development Corp. that a $1 billion data center had been proposed for the county. The Herald Independent reported on it a week later.
It would be three times or more larger than the largest development in the county, A.Y. McDonald’s $350 million, 100-acre foundry.
Brisbois said the developers later asked, “How did this get out?” He told them he wanted to be transparent.
“I’m sure my (economic development) colleagues would have said, ‘You were a fool to do it. I would never have released that information.’”
But progress continued.
Brisbois met again in early February at Scenic Rivers with the developers.
“It was more of, you start getting into the brass tacks of the project. The formality kind of is done. You’ve met them, now you’re on a first-name basis, that type of thing.”
Brisbois was also encouraged by a virtual meeting he had in February, the same month that officials two hours away in Beaver Dam announced they were working to land a $1 billion data center, which is now under construction. The meeting was with Prescott Balch, who has been sought out by data center opponents around Wisconsin for his expertise. Balch confirmed that he agreed that Brisbois’ estimate of 50 permanent jobs seemed solid.
“If I start talking 50 jobs, that’s a big deal in Grant County,” Brisbois said.
And yet, the developers never told Brisbois where exactly in the county they wanted to locate.
Opposition takes hold
People in Grant County have particular affection for being part of the Driftless Area, with its rugged hills and steep valleys, the result of being missed by the last glacier that covered most of Wisconsin. They worry about too much development.
Data center opponents began mobilizing early in 2026, but interest peaked March 8, when hundreds attended a rally featuring comedian Charlie Berens. The efforts of Pete Moris and Melodie Betts were beginning to pay off.
Moris, a public relations executive and Grant County native, has a son Grant, named after the county. He believes the data center would be too large for the Driftless Area and fears it would harm water wells.
Moris recalled the December newspaper story about Brisbois announcing the proposal.
“That set off alarm bells because if Ron’s talking about it in the paper, then this had to be in the works for a while,” Moris said. “And the fact that we weren’t being told who the developer was and who the end user is, that’s scary.”
Betts, a restaurant owner who drinks only reverse osmosis-purified water, also worries a data center would harm the water supply and attract more development.
“If we don’t stop this now, we’re going to lose everything that’s precious in the Driftless Area,” she said. “You let one in, you open up the door.”
Progress and optimism rise
As opponents claimed the spotlight, the developers seemed to back off.
About a week after the Berens rally, the developers called Brisbois out of the blue. “That was unusual,” Brisbois recalled.
They said a potential operator of the data center had asked about incentives, including a tax increment district (TID).
A TID is a common tax break that commits future property taxes from a land parcel’s anticipated increase in value to finance a proposed development.
Brisbois said he told the developers he didn’t think a TID would be legally possible for a town. He said he thought that not offering the tax break would appeal to residents, but sensed the developers disagreed.
“I don’t think they saw it as that,” he said. “After that, dead quiet.”
Brisbois followed up with two calls, leaving messages — but, for the first time, got no response.
They had always been “very prompt,” he said.
Then the developers reengaged.
They flew to Chicago and drove to Madison to meet with Brisbois and the Department of Natural Resources on March 19. They discussed state regulatory issues such as permits for air, water, wetlands and other issues. The developers emerged “feeling very good,” even as they began to hear the approval process would be time consuming, Brisbois said. In later phone calls, the developers were enthused that the data center might qualify for a state sales tax exemption.
That exemption is expected to be worth billions of dollars to data centers around the state.
By early April, Brisbois was confident enough to release more details, including an estimate that the data center would produce $5.5 million per year in property tax revenue to municipalities and school districts in Grant County. He said he had received fewer than five phone calls or emails opposing the data center, which had been “demonized” through social media, and dozens of supportive contacts, particularly from the local school district.
Keeney called local data center supporters “a silent majority.”
Brisbois also was optimistic because he felt he provided the developers what they needed. It was up to them to proceed with financing and acquiring land.
“From my perspective, they should have all that they need to put their ducks in a row,” he recalled. “I don’t know then why they wouldn’t proceed in Grant County.”
Brisbois had rated the chances of getting the data center as 1-in-12 after his first meeting with the developers, then 1-in-6 after the second meeting.
On April 6, he said it was better than a coinflip. “I would say right now, it’s leaning towards.”
‘Dead quiet’ and a town residents uprising
It didn’t take long for that optimism to fade.
Data center opponents had been contacting Brisbois’ board members, so he emailed them April 14. He tried to rebut claims about water and electricity use and emphasized the jobs and property tax revenue. “This data center project is going to be located somewhere,” he wrote. “If it’s going to be somewhere, it should be here.”
But asked the next day if there had been more progress with the developers, Brisbois said: “It’s gone dead quiet.” He adjusted the chances of landing the data center back to less than 50-50.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever had one (developer), after they were hot to trot, and then they went cold, and then they come back and they’re hot to trot,” he said, admitting that despite his optimistic nature, he was a bit deflated. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those yet. But we’ll see.”
Meanwhile, the opposition was doing more than rallying.
In Cassville, home to Nelson Dewey State Park, named after Wisconsin’s first governor and a longtime Grant County resident, the town board approved a data center moratorium. That was significant for a town that previously had no zoning regulation.
Following Cassville’s lead, several Grant County towns and the County Board adopted data center moratoriums. Lawmakers proposed legislation for statewide regulation. The state Public Service Commission moved to require data centers to pay the cost of generating and transmitting the electricity they would need. And gubernatorial candidates from both parties were vowing to protect communities from data centers.
Meanwhile, Brisbois continued to call the developers, with no luck. His daughters told Brisbois they were “ghosting” him — like a person who doesn’t want to go on a second date.
“When people go quiet like this, it’s an indicator to me that the project is not moving forward, or at least their interest is waning,” Brisbois said in late-April.
“Historically, that has been a very common practice in my industry. They just fade away.”
Brisbois admitted he was turning more attention to other projects and feeling disappointed.
“I put a lot of time into this and lost a lot of sleep over it,” he said at the time. “It stings a bit. I don’t know that it’s done-done. But I’m pretty calloused over by now.”
‘Very little due diligence’
Brisbois acknowledged he did “very little due diligence” into the developers, saying he had limited ability to background check out-of-state residents.
He said that left him feeling vulnerable.
“I’m making a leap of faith,” he said. “But I do that all the time. I’m assuming that a business has the financial means to pull this off.”
“It’s not my job to really scrutinize — OK, you’re a good candidate versus … you’re not qualified,” he continued. “I don’t necessarily have the resources to do that, I’m a one-person show.”
By late May, the proposal seemed like only a memory. No return phone calls. Nothing scheduled, even as opponents continued public protests.
It’s possible the developers will never announce whether or where they’re building a data center. But Brisbois expressed no regrets.
“I felt that the project certainly has its merits,” he said, “and certainly was worth pursuing.”
