Skepticism is reasonable in Wisconsin. Here is the arithmetic anyway.

Wisconsin landowners have heard large claims about transformative development before, and have watched how some of them turned out. If your instinct on receiving a letter about your land is suspicion, that instinct is earned and we are not going to argue you out of it.

What we can do is set out the arithmetic plainly, so the suspicion has something to work on.

What has to be spent before any of it applies

Three figures, and the arithmetic in this piece rests on them.

Above 100,000 people in the host county, 150 million dollars. Between 50,000 and 100,000, a hundred million. At 50,000 or fewer, fifty million. Five years to get there from certification, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation decides whether you did.

Fifty million is among the lowest figures in this network. Set against Kansas at 250 million or Iowa at 200, it means a project that could not be built at all in a neighbouring state can be built in a small Wisconsin county, and that is the whole reason rural ground here is being looked at.

Why the tiering points away from where you would expect

The counties everyone associates with this development in Wisconsin are in the southeast, and those are precisely the counties facing the highest bar.

A project in a county of fewer than 50,000 people needs a third of the investment required in a large county to qualify for the same treatment. The legislature wrote it that way deliberately, to push development out of the corridor and into parts of the state that wanted the activity.

Whether that is good policy is a fair argument. What it means for you is narrower: if you farm in a smaller Wisconsin county, the tax arithmetic is working in your direction rather than against you.

The skepticism, taken seriously

Two objections come up repeatedly in Wisconsin and both deserve a straight answer rather than reassurance.

The first is whether the public gets back what it gives up. Foregone sales tax is real money, the permanent job counts at these facilities are modest, and there is legitimate published analysis questioning the trade. If you go forward with something, this is the argument that will be made in your county, and you should expect it rather than be surprised by it.

The second is electricity bills. Wisconsin utilities have been building and proposing significant new capacity, and the question of who pays for it is actively contested. Your neighbours will have opinions, and some of them will have read more about it than the person writing to you about your land.

Neither of these means your ground is worthless or that a project near you would be a bad thing. They mean the conversation is already underway in this state and you would be entering it, not starting it.

What actually decides your property

Transmission within reach. High voltage lines on or beside the ground, or a substation nearby. The distribution line along your road will not carry a project of this kind however much land sits behind it.

Which utility holds your area. We Energies, Wisconsin Public Service, Alliant, Xcel, the municipal utilities and the electric cooperatives are in different positions on large new load, and the process for getting an answer differs between them.

Ground that works. A contiguous block that is genuinely level, drains properly, and holds a foundation. Wisconsin has a good deal of ground that looks flat and is not, and a good deal that is flat and wet.

And your county and town. Permitting is local here, which means the people weighing it are people you know.

What to ask whoever contacts you

Ask what the qualifying threshold is in your county. Anybody working seriously in Wisconsin knows the three tiers and can tell you which one you are in without looking it up.

Then ask what transmission they have identified near your ground, and what they know about capacity on it.

Two specific answers means they have looked. Generalities about Wisconsin being well positioned means they have not.

Where we sit in this

We are the buyer, not somebody finding a buyer. We use our own capital, nobody here earns a percentage of a transaction, and your property does not get circulated to a list of third parties.

That structure is why we can afford to say no, and we say it often. Most Wisconsin ground we look at will not suit this, and when that is the answer you get it plainly, with the specific reason, rather than a polite maybe that runs for months.

Send us the county, roughly the acreage, and what runs near you electrically. The review costs you nothing, commits you to nothing, and does not ask you to stop talking to anybody else. If any party wants money or exclusivity from a Wisconsin landowner before showing what they have actually looked at, that is worth slowing down for.