Meta has bought land in Rosemount, Minnesota, which could be used for a data center in the future.

According to Finance & Commerce, a company called Jimnist LLC, a Delaware subsidiary of the tech giant, has bought two pieces of land for $70 million.

The land parcels are located northwest of the intersection of Blaine Avenue East and 145th Street. One parcel was sold for $26.68 million, while the other was sold for $43.32 million.

Meta told DCD that there is no existing plan to develop the land, but it has been purchased pre-emptively, should future business needs require it.

According to the report, Rosemount senior planner Anthony Nemcek said the city has not received a planned unit development application for this site from anyone.

However, it was previously reported by F&C that the city council had adopted an alternative urban area-wide review, presenting two scenarios for the site. The first scenario was a 2.3 million sq ft (213,677 sqm) data center and the second scenario was for industrial development.

The site is currently zoned as an employment district and was sold by RGA Holdings LLC and RADS Land Company LLC.

Meta already has a planned data center in the Rosemount Area; a 715,000 sq ft (66,426 sqm) data center that will see an investment of $800 million.

The state of Minnesota proposed expanded tax breaks for data centers in April last year.

Minnesota has not traditionally had a large data center market; players including DataBank, Colognix, T5, and LightEdge have a presence around Minneapolis, while Stream has developed two facilities in nearby Chaska and Compass has a site in Shakopee.

On the outskirts of Minneapolis, CloudHQ is planning a large campus near Chaska. Microsoft and AWS are planning data centers in Becker, the latter being a $1 billion campus.

Google had been looking to develop a campus in Becker but backed away from the project in 2022.