 Welcome to Love Where You Live, a program of the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. I'm Betsy Alice, Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, and I'm your host. There has been a tremendous amount of economic development activity in Sheboygan County in the past couple of years. Our guest today is Dane Czekolinski, the Director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation. Welcome, Dane. Thank you. Glad to have you here. There really has been an amazing kind of swell of expanding companies, needs for more development, more housing, all those things I'd like to talk to you about today. One of the things that I think people are curious about is what goes on behind the scenes. You know, how are these plans laid? We don't just decide, wow, we want to get that kind of business and pull them in. Tell us some of the work it takes to make this happen. Sure. Well, behind the scenes is fairly straightforward. You know, just like any marketing effort, we're always trying to get to A to B in the absolute quickest time possible. And for example, one of our successes that we're very proud of is attracting more multifamily developers in the area to fill in needs. So the first thing is to identify the need. In the case of multifamily, we started hearing from company after company saying, you know, we're trying to relocate individuals in this area, but we don't have the housing stock that they're looking for, particularly in multifamily. So right away, we wanted to take a look and study how far we were behind in multifamily. And for a couple of different reasons, one, to get our numbers in a quantified and have something to sell and present to prospective developers. But more secondly, give those developers the respect they deserve. If we're going to go out and ask them to put five, 10, $20 million in our community, we owe them the respect of doing our due diligence in our homework before we go out and ask them. And so from there, there are numerous professional associations for any given industry. And really, it's a matter of networking and finding who might be interested. We take a look at news stories. So if we see that a developer did a multifamily in a similar-sized community of Sheboygan, like in Oshkosh or Owasa, certainly. That's a company that we reach out to. And then, more importantly, and just as importantly, we look at our local companies and see what type of networks they may have. So in the case of multifamily, we actually pulled as many of our existing apartment managers and owners into a room and presented them the findings of our study and said, you know, and it was kind of almost an aha moment for many of them because I think they all realized that they were full. I don't think they realized that everyone else was full too. And a couple projects have resulted from that meeting. And then the second thing is going out to our business bankers and saying, who do you have in your Rolodex? Who have you done multifamily deals with and can you call them up and let them know that an opportunity here exists? And that's produced quite a bit of fruit. So we just try to leverage existing networks and it's not, you know, there's nothing complicated. There's no magic in the process. It's just good old fashioned networking and marketing. So last summer, I think it was you hosted a developers tour. And that's a really innovative way, I think, to have brought people into our community and exposed them to what's great here and also at the same time show them some real properties that they can consider. Exactly. We weren't the only ones part of the developers. Sheboygan County Chamber has been involved with it, the Sheboygan bid district, City of Sheboygan. And really what those tours are designed to do is to educate a dozen or two dozen individuals very rapidly on what the community has to offer. So it holds several advantages of doing a tour like that. The first of all, we separate the wheat from the shaft because if they're coming, they're seriously interested in taking a look. The second thing once again is we do our homework. We do our due diligence. The studies that we do having information on the properties readily available makes it very easy for different developers to take a look at the area and very quickly decide whether or not an opportunity is worth pursuing. And then the best thing about this community is that we don't want to talk about it. We want to show them it because we show extremely well. It's hard to get a developer to say, you know, we have a complete lack in multifamily housing. And then by the way, have them overlook the lake and the river and dare them not to build there. You know, it's really easy to sell the community. And then, you know, those events are usually capped off by bringing in local business people and allowing more networking and allowing our local business leaders to tell it to the developers directly one-on-one and say, yes, this is a challenge. There's definitely an opportunity here. So we hope to do more events like that. As a matter of fact, the one coming up this summer is going to be focused on retail, which is our next effort. Awesome. So the other thing that I remember getting out of it and watching them appreciate is the ability to meet the people they'll be working with that sometimes can create red tape in some communities and be more difficult to deal with. But when you meet them face to face, you realize, wow, I can do business with this person. This is our city official. This is our development corporation. And these are real people and they're friendly and they're open. And I think I think we can make a good deal. And that certainly, I think, is a huge element. Obviously, the city has been absolutely wonderful with many developments here in the community. And when the city is a partner in that and they meet one of these developers and they're selling. Now when they come back and say, you know, there's something we're very interested, they already have a positive relationship because there's already time invested in both parts to see something come to fruition. So, yes, having the communities involved in efforts like that are critical. Well, let's talk a little bit about that need for housing, need for market rate apartments, need for temporary housing. I know at the chamber we have people come in all the time and companies call us trying to identify some temporary housing even. And we've never been able to have a good solution for them. Tell us some of those numbers and then talk a little bit about what's going on around the county and how we're going to sit in a couple of years. Sure. Well, there's many different numbers I'm going to throw at you right now. So our initial study said that we needed 300 units immediately. When we showed that to a developer and they ended up doing their own study much more sophisticated than the one they did, they kind of laughed at us and said, no, you need four to 500 a year for the next five years just to catch up. Wow. And when we look at that, you know, I can kind of agree because we haven't had any new apartments built since 2008. So we figured that we've been almost a half a decade down the road, eight years down the road with no multifamily built. And now we've got to play catch up prior to that about one to 200 units would come online every year. So there are numerous projects in the hopper. I'm hoping that we're going to be north of five, 600 units in starting construction or somewhere in process. Quite a few of those are in downtown Sheboygan. There's a development going on the form of Boston store development going on a street and there's potentially one more that hopefully will pop here soon. That would have a tremendous impact. We're talking 170 plus units in our downtown in one year to put that into perspective. That's almost like building an 80 acre subdivision of $200,000 homes in our downtown and then filling it with people almost instantly. So it's going to it's really, I think, going to change the flavor of the community in quite a bit quite a few aspects. There are a pair of projects going up in the town of Sheboygan right now town homes and apartments. There's a project that's been announced in Plymouth. Another one that's trying to move forward on Taylor Avenue kind of near Taylor in 23. And so, you know, our hope is to get a few more projects in some of the other communities and some of the outlying areas. And just to try to fill the need that we know we have because our employees are sitting on 3,300 open positions within 25 miles of the community within community distance. And we're going to need more housing in order to accommodate that type of growth. Right, because it goes well beyond the actual number of people that we have here that are available to work. Oh, absolutely. And you know, when you think about it, one third of all Americans rent, right? But the vast majority of people who move rent versus they own, you know, usually they'll move to a community rent for a year or two and then figure out where they want to live and then buy. Kind of like you and I did. And it goes beyond just economic development. It goes into community development because what we're anecdotally hearing right now is individuals are taking jobs at many of our major companies and they're living in Port Washington, McWan, Grafton. And guess what? If they have a little kid, if they have a child and they say they rent a house or rent an apartment in McWan or Grafton and that kid starts school at Grafton Elementary or, you know, at school system, the odds of them moving up here are almost nothing once that starts. So from a community development standpoint, we really have to do our absolute best to land new employees, new people in our own communities from right off the bat because once you start developing those networks, once you start developing where you like to shop, where you like to go, if that's not in this community or somewhere in Sheboygan County, it's probably never going to happen. Great. Another thing that we always hear about is the lack of shopping, the lack of retail. And I know there have been some rather big announcements, you know, in the last couple of years about stores like Meijer, Sam's Club. What do you know about those and their timeline? Is that... Sure. I understand that Sam's Club is looking at starting demolition this year and I think they want a next year open date when they've actually got the ribbon. And I understand that Meijer is probably not going to do anything with them all until probably 2017. So we're still going to have to wait a little bit more for those new large big boxes and you hit it right on the perception of retail. And certainly we do have a lack in certain categories of retail and we know as a matter of fact we're studying it right now to give retail developers the respect of having us do our homework. But I think one of the key kind of perceptions and the key challenges we have is the way the community is laid out and the way the interstate works. So we, Sheboygan, has three interstate exits. It's probably going to be a fourth one because the very south, I think that's going to get opened up in the next year or two and be a much better road coming into the community. But retail always wants to be on 23 and 43, right? Memorial Mall is the number one spot where all retailers want to be, which shocks a lot of people in the community. They're like, well, the Memorial Mall has been basically dying for a number of years. And I just have to talk that up to mismanagement over the years at the end of the day because I can tell you every retailer wants to be there because it's the center of the population. But there's really no land to build there anymore. And then they kind of go on the south side and realize that finding land on the south side is a bit of a challenge. And then we ask them, why don't you tickle at the north exit? Highway 42 up in the town of Sheboygan. The general reaction is, eh, it's chopped up. There's curb cuts everywhere. Nice buildings. Not so nice buildings. I'm not sure this is the place to invest 15 million in a new retail center. And so that's exactly what our study is aimed at, is to look at overall planning up there. And we're doing this conjunction with the town of Sheboygan, which is great because once again we need our community partners on board to look at the planning. The town has already instituted architectural standards and to identify kind of 25 retailers that are in similar markets but are not in ours. And the study even goes beyond that. The consultant that we've hired will actually contact those 25 and ask them, hey, have you ever thought about opening up a store here? And so that's where we're heading in the retail direction. Yeah, and then there are the town centers and Sheboygan in particular. I know, I mean, I think it's a fairly vibrant town. Imagine having those additional people there with all the housing developments. It's going to continue to be more and more vibrant. You know, what do you think is going to happen in the downtown? I know we went on that tour of some Michigan towns to look at how they were developing and what they've done in the past 10, 20 years. I know it's a long process. I know people will have to be a little patient, but what do you see coming in the next maybe five years in our downtown? Well, there is an effort focused specifically in downtown Sheboygan right now, another partnership between the bid district, city and ourselves. And we're coming together with some information and I know the bid district is going to be working on reaching out to kind of the mom and pop retailers who they think would be a great fit in our downtown and don't necessarily compete with the existing businesses there. The information we're bringing is a list of vacancies and property owners. So that way that information is clearly laid out and some of the retail data as well. And I'm kind of excited that there's going to be a proactive effort to try to fill in as many gaps as possible. I know that I think city planning is thinking in the right direction. We did do a tour in Holland, Michigan and realized that there was a couple key elements that we're hoping to emulate. I think certainly place building, getting more areas that people like to just naturally want to be around. I think another thing is trying to keep as much retail on the first floor is absolutely possible because once it's broken up with different service industries, which are great to have in our downtown, but from a walkability standpoint, we're always playing on human behavior. And if you have to walk a half a block to hit the next retail, it's not going to be a natural retail walking corridor. So that's what's happening in Sheboygan and even implement there's some things going on. Actually, we've partnered with their city and their redevelopment authority to actually purchase a building in their downtown and get it back up to historical standards and place a kind of existing place, a business in there that kind of epitomizes Plymouth. Basically a cheese store, so to speak. So there's some efforts going on in multiple communities and it definitely plays to the whole kind of new urbanism field. Yeah, I think we're just so fortunate even within the boundaries of our county to have all these diverse communities. I mean, their characters are all unique and wonderful, but for all different reasons. So very lucky in that regard. Anything else? I know there are a couple that are opening up pretty soon in downtown Sheboygan. One is an art gallery, another is a paint and kind of a where you paint these wooden signs and drink beer at the same time, I think. And apparently it's a hot item. There are probably seven of these throughout the state and we're going to be the eighth. There's a very active push that activity based, I don't want to call them bars, but I'm going to go ahead and use the word bars or taverns. You know, years ago the neighborhood tavern used to sit there basically watch TV until the lights went down, but the recent trend is activity. Now whether that's grabbing a glass of wine and doing some painting, the beer, the trivia. You just see a whole resurgence and especially in the new generations that don't want to go out and just drink and sit next to someone. They want to go drink and do something, do something interactive. They want to talk with other individuals. And I think that's an environment that all of our communities need to do the best at trying to create that atmosphere because we are competing with communities across the globe for talent. And we have to do as much as we can to cater to the markets that are coming. I think it's a healthy sign that people really want to hang out together and be social and do things together. Maybe it's a backlash of having such a high technology culture now is that people really want to get together and make new friends and see other people. And what's interesting too is I just read a recent story that Wisconsin is the most extroverted state. We have the most personalities of outgoing people and that's been consistently a top mark in this area. Oh, I love that. That's a great place. Yeah. I'm looking forward to what's happening. Well, so now let's turn in a little bit and talk about industry. And I know that a lot of businesses are in an expansion mode. Of course, new jobs are being added. Business parks are being developed. Just give us a little picture of that, a little scenario of what's going on in our county in that regard. Sure. Well, in terms of business parks, the county boasts four communities with business parks which are quite a few. And by community business parks means that the land is owned and developed by the municipality and is available at below market rates for companies that are seeking more room or more space. The most recent kind of investment in a business park has happened in Sheboygan Falls with Vision Business Park. As a matter of fact, a new road was punched in that opens up probably 30, 40 acres to development. And the whole goal of these business parks is to try to get the ground ready so that way when you go in, you know, the water retention is already in place, the water utilities are to site, the roads there. So when you go in, all you need is a building permit versus a developer's agreement which really cuts down on the time to get a building up. And what we're seeing with just about any company anyone will work with, you know, time is of the essence. That's the most valuable resource we have. Anything we can do in the development process, whether for the retailers, the multi-families or companies, anything we can do to cut down on time, even if it's a couple of weeks, will ultimately result in more projects. Because we know when projects linger out there, we have a window to close them. And if we can't get it done, the opportunity is going to pass up. And we're very committed to not letting that happen. But in regards to all the different business parks and entities that are expanding, we do know of a couple entities that are planning to expand. Unfortunately, I really can't share anything on those. But certainly, I foresee employment growth in the county, definitely in the manufacturing area. And I know there's been some recent announcements. I know Johnsonville announced they're adding down to their headquarters and they're just finishing up an expansion on one of their plans. And it's just amazing to see these companies continue to invest in the community and reinvest. And if there's any strong indicator of what our local companies are thinking, I think it's the Red Raider project. You know, building 4.3 million dollar tech wings on the Shabug and North at high schools. And those were paid for by 90% of private funds. So you have private companies sticking money into our public school district to educate kids and get them interested in advanced robotics and CNC operations. Jobs that are going to pay a family wage sustaining careers if they choose to go in them. And if there's any better indication in long term what these companies are planning on, I think that says it all. That's huge. We're very fortunate that way. And speaking of filling those jobs, you know, there's a wonderful project called the Joseph Project out of Milwaukee. You know, I've heard some about it, but I'd like you to tell our audience a little bit about, give it a little background about that. And then what it's going to mean to our communities here and the people who live here as well. Well the Project Joseph really revolved around some conversations we had with Senator Ron Johnson's office and conversations with companies. So we know when we look at our demographics that we need to encourage people to move in here. I don't think the community has any other choice but to do that, which is we're very well situated for it as a matter of fact. And so we decided to take two problems. We have a lot of jobs and Milwaukee is definitely hurting on the jobs front. So what can we do to get workers from Milwaukee here to shipwagon it? And really it revolves, Project Joseph revolves around a very active church that is going out there finding individuals who are looking for better jobs. Mostly individuals involved in the Joseph Project, and this is in inner city Milwaukee, already have jobs. But their choice between jobs is do they want to get paid $750 minimum wage at a local restaurant or fast food place? Or do they want a $9 an hour temp job for an area manufacturer? And it's interesting when you look at wage rates in Milwaukee how quickly they escalate once you're off public transit. So it's almost like the jobs available to those who live in the urban core are just not family sustaining. So many of our employers hire at $14, $15 an hour starting range and with full benefits. And so being able to jump from $9 to $10 an hour on a temp job where on day 89 they let you go because they don't want to pay health insurance if you hit three months. And then being able to land them up here at $15 an hour working in one of our local companies. Right now we have had about three, four thousand people take advantage of that and we expect that program to grow. As a matter of fact the SCDC is going to be purchasing vehicles to try to increase the flexibility of the program and servicing more employers. And I think what it means to individuals here is the sheer realization that we have it great. We have it really good and we cannot be humble about getting out the message that our manufacturing jobs, when we look at what they pay compared to just about every other manufacturing community in the state of Wisconsin, I always look at Kenosha Racine because they've been growing very, very well with companies jumping the border. Their manufacturers started at $11 an hour. Our typically started at $3, $4 an hour. That's six, seven, $8,000 a year more right off the bat. And we have to get that message out and we have to do some more proactive efforts to get individuals to move here. And I think it proves that we have a community that other people want and the amenity. Which is a great segue to our last question and that is you and I are very familiar with the someplace better campaign. We both worked on it. Our staffs were hard at work on it. Where is it now? How's the website doing? And I know you mentioned the jobs are up to $3,300 now. So on someplace better, someplace better.org, you know, going to the jobs, it's increased to 3,300 jobs. And what we did is we're pulling in data that are within 25 miles of Sheboygan within community distance. The website itself has had over 14,000 hits to date and about two-thirds of those visitors are actively looking for work. I would say about half the hits on the website are from individuals who do not live here. And that was the main goal is how do we provide tools to companies to raise their batting averages in order to sell this area as a place to live. Now, the effort overall is still I think very much in its infancy. It's spent something we've been working on behind the scenes for over a year, but that was all cutting bait. You know, they say either you're cutting bait or you're fishing. And I feel right now we're to give an analysis to our charter fishing area. We've cut the bait. We're now in the boat and we're heading out to Lake Michigan. We have not dropped our full lines in the water yet. And it feels like we have a couple of things that we were trying to kick off here with the healthcare industry and truly starting to really use that website and use the materials to go out and find people. So it feels like we're very much in infancy and I think over the next couple of months, next couple of years, it will definitely evolve. Well, I encourage everyone out there to use someplacebetter.org and send people there and send it to your friends and your kids who don't live here. You know, and make sure that that word gets out. Yes, and not only for yourselves. One thing that we're noticing very quickly and some of our feedback from companies have been, well, we sent this to our existing employees and they didn't realize all of this. Thank you, Dane, very much for being with us. And thank you, audience. Just hold on for a moment. We'll be right back with Anne Briskey from the John Michael Kolarite Center to talk about Levitt Amp Sheboygan Music Series. Welcome back. With summer fast approaching, we are looking at some exciting news for Sheboygan County and for Sheboygan in particular. I know that I was a voter in the competition to bring back the Levitt Amp Sheboygan Music Series. And today I'm glad to have as our guest Anne Briskey. Welcome to the program. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. So glad to have you here. Anne is the senior manager of public programming for John Michael Kolarite Center and works closely with the concert series and coordinates it, which has to be a huge job. Oh, it's a fun job. Well, tell us about it. Absolutely. So just to give you a little bit of background on how it all started, we were hosting, the Art Center was hosting an open mic series on mic. And for those who do not know who or what mic is, it is a public sculpture recording studio that opens up into performance space. So we were hosting an open mic series and what we noticed were families were coming out every Thursday night. They were bringing picnics and family and friends and having a wonderful time. In the fall of 2014, a staff member noticed an announcement from Levitt Amp of a grant announcement for a free live music series to be presented in your community that was also revitalizing the area and thought about what we were trying to do with mic in the open mic series. So we met with the city of Sheboygan and Sheboygan squared, which was business improvement district at the time. And all the stars aligned because the criteria was about a free live music series for your community and revitalizing an area. And the bid at the time had just identified the planning process of a cultural arts corridor and thought about the Art Center and the library, the Wild Center above and beyond Children's Museum and thought that the former Boston Store site would be the perfect site for Mr. Mike to move over there. So that's how it started. We applied for the grant. We were very excited to see that we got it. We were one of ten organizations and the only one in the Midwest. We had the performances last summer very successful. We brought Bismarcky, Webangio 3, Jonathan Jackson, 14,000 attendees. And it was the community support that did that and so we applied again. And as you said with voting, we got back into the second round. We were voted and we stayed in the number one spot for voting for the grant. And here we are. Yeah, right? I didn't know that. And so we're going to do it again. That's wonderful. Yeah. Can you kind of give us a sneak preview of what's going to happen this summer? Definitely. We're only going to do ten concerts. We're going to start June 16th and go through August 18th. And we will start the concerts at six o'clock. We'll have an opener and then a headliner. All the great things will be there, food trucks, beverages. Just to give you a few samples of what's coming up. We have Andy and Alex. They are the twin sisters out of Green Bay, senior songwriters that were featured on The Voice. We have Traveling McCurries. And they are the sons of the legendary bluegrass Del McCurry. We also have Scythian. They are a Celtic rock group. And to open it up, we're going to have an all female mariachi band. So the goal of Levitt is to make sure we have a diverse audience. And we're making sure we have diverse genres of music. Well, and congratulations too, I should say, on winning the Working Together Award from the Chamber of Commerce this year. Well, thank you. And as you know, it takes a whole community to do that. And there's so many people involved with doing that. So the city, the Sheboygan Square, the chamber, the press. I mean, it's a long, long list. And the community, like you said, it's people like you who voted for it. So that's what it's about. It's for our community. And as you just see it, I know last summer, just even going to the, I probably made it to about six of them. And every single one of them was a wonderful surprise. Oh, that's fantastic. And that's what we want. We want people to come back every Thursday night to these free live concerts. Well, Ann, thank you very much. Congratulations to your team and the way that you have worked with all of those organizations in town. Well, thank you. And I think that it's kind of created a center of excitement for people. The more excited people get, the more people go downtown, the more successful our town becomes. Absolutely. So thanks to you. Thank you. Yes. And thank you to our audience for joining us here today for Love Where You Live. Looking forward to next month. And we will see you then.