Ida Huddleston has lived on the same stretch of farmland outside Maysville, Ky., since she was 16. She and her late husband built a log home there, raised children, and worked the soil through six decades of marriage. Today, the family owns roughly 1,200 acres, and multiple generations still live on it.
Last spring, an unnamed company described only as a major artificial intelligence firm came looking for a piece of it, according to WKRC Local 12. The company approached dozens of landowners in Mason County about buying roughly half of the Huddleston family’s property for a proposed data center campus.
Huddleston, 82, was offered about $60,000 an acre for her 71 acres, over $4 million. Her daughter, Delsia Bare, 54, was offered $48,000 an acre for her 463 acres, putting her potential payout above $22 million. Combined, the family’s offer topped $26 million, well above the roughly $6,000-an-acre going rate for farmland in the county.
Bare admits she signed a contract to sell, briefly. Fear was part of it, she said, namely worries over what might happen if the company invoked eminent domain and pressure from developers who wouldn’t identify themselves. But the deal didn’t sit right, and she and her mother pulled out, Bare told People in an exclusive interview.
