The Foxconn Real Estate Show

From Urban Milwaukee:

Ceremonial groundbreaking at the Foxconn campus in Mount Pleasant. Photo from The White House.

More than three and a half years after Foxconn signed a memorandum with Gov. Scott Walker promising to turn Racine County into the Silicon Valley of Wisconsin, the company still isn’t manufacturing anything. Other than press releases. 

But it continues to put up buildings. As one Foxconn employee told The Verge, in describing the utter failure of the project in Racine County: “When you’re desperate and you have no product to sell and the only asset you have is land, what can you do? You build on it or you grow crops on it.” 

So far there have been no crops cultivated by Foxconn, though the company has considered trying fish farming, tree farming and dairy exports — before rejecting those ideas, The Verge reported — with all the land it was handed by Mount Pleasant and Racine County, as The Verge reported. Which leaves only the option of building on the property, to give the impression that something is going on. 

The company’s original promise was to create 20 million square feet of manufacturing, prompting former President Donald Trump to dub the project “the eighth wonder of the world.” Alas, it has fallen far short, at about 2% of the promised footprint. But it has created four different buildings that some day may be useful for something. The list includes

Read more: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/02/25/murphys-law-the-foxconn-real-estate-show/