Project dossier · Caledonia (Racine County), Wisconsin

Project Nova (Microsoft Caledonia) Withdrawn

Microsoft withdrew its rezoning application for a 244-acre campus west of the Oak Creek power plant after sustained opposition, even though the village had already voted to approve the rezoning. Microsoft says it is still looking for a site elsewhere in Racine County.

Key facts

Operator
Microsoft
Owner
Microsoft
Tenant
Microsoft
Size
244 ac
Location
Caledonia (Racine County), Wisconsin
First proposed
2025-09-01
Decided
2025-10-08
Stage today
Withdrawn

Source
read 2026-08-23

What to do next

Next step: Withdrawn — confirm it is dead in the record and watch for the same site resurfacing under a new name or LLC.

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What has happened so far (4 events)

  • 2025-09-01rezoning
    Village documents sought to rezone 244 acres along Douglas Avenue and Botting Road from agriculture to light manufacturing for three data center buildings and a 15-acre substation, identified only as 'Project Nova'; residents learned Microsoft was behind it about a week before the planning commission met (September 2025). · source
  • 2025-09-01public-comment
    Forty of the 49 people who spoke to the Caledonia planning commission opposed the rezoning (September 2025). · source
  • 2025-10-08withdrawal
    Microsoft withdrew its rezoning application, saying that based on the community feedback it heard it had chosen not to move forward with this site; a village board vote set for October 14 became moot. · source
  • 2025-10-08announcement
    Microsoft said it remains committed to building in southeastern Wisconsin and is working with the village and county to find an alternate site in Caledonia or elsewhere in Racine County. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 42.800, -87.880 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Wisconsin

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Project Nova (Microsoft Caledonia)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/project-nova-caledonia-wi, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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