Stettin site for Marathon County campus falls through
A possible site for a Marathon County multi-department campus in the town of Stettin has been sold to a private developer, sending county officials looking for other options.
“Basically, we’re back to square one again,” highway commissioner Jim Griesbach told the Infrastructure Committee last week Thursday.
The roughly 30-acre parcel is located off 72nd Avenue near Stettin’s industrial park. Committee members authorized county officials to make an offer on the land during a closed session discussion in October.
For years, the county has been looking for a site to relocate the highway, parks and emergency management departments. In addition to consolidating county operations at one central location, the move would also free up land for redevelopment near Marathon Park in Wausau.
Committee members asked Griesbach about utilizing land already owned by the county, with supervisor Tom Seubert drawing attention to land near the Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee.
Griesbach said the highway department needs to be centrally located enough to serve areas north and west of Wausau, without causing delays and increasing fuel consumption. He also noted that the site would need to have water and sewer services.
“We own hundreds of hundreds of acres, but I don’t believe we want to build up in the town of Harrison or the town of Spencer,” he said.
Supervisors also asked Griesbach if the new owner of the Stettin property could be approached about a potential land swap, but he didn’t think that is likely.
“The new owner bought it for development,” he said. “He didn’t buy it to resell.”
County administrator Lance Leonhard acknowledged that the county will likely have to pay a premium for land that is conveniently located near a highway exchange.
“I know we’re going to have to pay a significant amount of money for any parcel that’s going to meet the criteria in terms of location,” he said. “We want the same location as other prime, large industrial/ commercial businesses want.”
Leonhard said the county is considering multiple options for relocating county departments, and not all of them require one central location.
Griesbach said he’s been talking with a realtor to see what’s available on the market, but if the county wants to go any further with an agent, it’ll need to go through a request for proposal process.
Leonhard said the county owns several “desirable pieces of property” that could be used for bargaining with Wausau or another nearby municipality.
“Right now, the parcels we’ve identified and talked about just don’t seem to be panning out, but I still have to have additional conversations with the city to see what opportunities might exist,” he said.
n The committee voted to apply for 80 percent federal funding for four bridge projects. These include the replacement of bridges on CTH P near Fenwood ($180,000 county share) and CTH J in the town of Texas over the Trappe River ($250,000). Bridge rehabilitations are planned for CTH J in the town of Easton over the Big Sandy River ($120,000) and CTH M over the Big Eau Pleine ($280,000).
n Supervisor John Robinson gave the committee an update on the county’s broadband project, presenting a map of the towers and fiber optic cables being installed, along with the results of Internet speed tests in various locales. Robinson said the county needs to make sure the Federal Communications Commission has the right data on local broadband coverage, because it will affect future federal funding. He thinks internet service providers might be overstating their performance in some areas.
“If you look at it from a very high level, it looks like the whole county is served,” he said. “You really have to drill down.”
n Leonhard talked to the committee about updating the county’s special events ordinance, which deals with the planning and services needed for large gatherings. The current ordinance requires a license for events with at least 3,000 people lasting eight hours or more. Leonhard said the county needs to decide whether it wants to recover its costs for providing traffic control and extra law enforcement to such events. He said he wants one member each from the Infrastructure, Law Enforcement and ERC committees to work on amending the ordinance.
The committee nominated Supervisor Chris Dickinson to be its representative, but if he declines, supervisor John Robinson said he would take the role.
