At a crossroads: Village of Harrison to build first business park

Rich Palzewic

Staff

September 23, 2024

VILLAGE OF HARRISON – The Village of Harrison, located on the northeast shores of Lake Winnebago in both Calumet and Outagamie counties, has purchased approximately 23 acres of land as part of its development plans for its first business park – Crossroads Business Park.

Chad Pelishek, assistant village administrator, said the park, which will be located at Outagamie County Road KK, State 55 and Friendship Drive, is expected to encourage commercial and industrial development in the surrounding area.

Of the 13 lots – which range in size from 3/4 of an acre to 5.5 acres and are available for purchase for $35,000 per acre – Pelishek said nine are already accounted for.

“I’m a little surprised at how fast the lots have gone,” he said. “On the other hand, the business park is in a good location. The interest has been overwhelming. For the last three or four board meetings, we’ve entertained two to three letters of intent from interested folks.”

Pelishek said the location of Crossroads Business Park sees about 7,200 vehicles per day.

“That crossroads area – hence the name – is where (the roads) all kind of come together,” he said. “I don’t anticipate the remaining four lots to last very long. The lots that are left are a bit smaller – less than an acre – so they may be a little bit more challenging to build.”

State Highway 55, Pelishek said, has a lot of traffic between Kaukauna, Sherwood and Fond du Lac.

“Other places have higher traffic counts, but there’s a lot of visibility in that KK/Appleton area,” he said. “It’s bulging at the seams and needs a major upgrade, but there’s currently no funding to do that.”

Pelishek said he can’t disclose specifics on what businesses will be utilizing the park, quite yet.

“I can say that none of (the businesses) are industrial,” he said. “Most of them are commercial in nature, but I can’t get into more specifics at this time.”

For more information on the remaining available lots, interested parties, Pelishek said, can contact him directly.

A vision in the making

Pelishek said the Village of Harrison – which was created in 2013 from parts of the Town of Harrison and the Town of Buchanan – has historically seen a lot of residential growth but not as much commercial growth – hence the inspiration for starting a business park.

“Harrison is one of the fastest-growing communities in the county and Fox Valley region,” he said. “The village board identified the need that they didn’t want to specifically become a bedroom community, if you will, and they wanted to balance out the tax revenue between residential and commercial.”

Pelishek said in September of last year, he was hired by the village to focus on expanding the commercial footprint of the village and working on commercial retail-type development.

“There had been a proposal by a private developer to build out this Crossroads Business Park,” he said. “The developer was a contractor who determined he didn’t have the wherewithal of what was required (to complete the entire project). He could do the utilities and the roadway, but to sell lots and to work through some of the additional village requirements, he didn’t feel he could do that.”

That’s when Pelishek said the developer made a pitch to the village.

“I want to say it was February of this year when he approached the village about buying it, us taking it over and being the developer of it,” he said. “We had recently just finished a five-year strategic economic development plan, and it identified the need for the village to be competitive in the local market and to have sites available we could develop and work with developers on – the timing was perfect.”

Pelishek said ultimately, the village board made an offer to the developer and got the land under contract.

“We closed on the 23 acres in August and paid $850,000 for it,” he said. “We basically took the design the private developer had put together and only tweaked it a little bit.”

Pelishek said because the 23-acre parcel is under contract, Gene Frederickson Trucking and Excavating, will begin work on developing the site later this fall.

“We have a goal of having a gravel road ready by May 1 of next year,” he said. “We’re getting protective covenants in place for the types of restrictions we’re going to have on the development that’s happening. Then we will start working on transferring the land to the interested parties – probably later this year or the first part of next year. I would say the majority of (the businesses) will break ground probably next spring, unless we have a decent winter.”

Other opportunities

Pelishek said the village also owns 20 acres just across the road from the Crossroads Business Park, and there’s the opportunity to develop that land, too.

“Though we also own the 20 acres nearby, there are no utilities there,” he said. “We need the (Crossroads Business Park) development to happen so we can get the utilities under Highway 55. For our long-range plan, it made sense for us to develop the business park first and then ultimately, hopefully, develop across the road and be able to bring those 20 acres in and do more development. That would give us more than 40 acres for potential development between the two sites.”

Pelishek said though the future development of the 20 acres “is a little ways away,” the village is already working with some interested parties for later next year once the utilities are installed.

That’s not all for the village, Pelishek said.

“The village also bought 44 acres several years ago basically south of County Road KK between Manitowoc and Schmidt roads and right by County Road N,” he said. “We bought the land to possibly develop that into a village center – sort of a central business district.”

Pelishek said the project has been on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the change in the economy.

“With the idea of putting in a bunch of infrastructure, building up the site and having businesses come in, we took a step back from that,” he said. “We are still looking at developing commercial lots adjacent to KK to try to create a central business area because the village doesn’t have a downtown or any kind of central retail corridor.”

Pelishek said the village has already gotten good interest from businesses looking at the 44-acre parcel.

“Some of them that were looking at Crossroads Business Park are now looking at this location,” he said. “There are some other larger developments to come related to that, including the building of a new fire station. We’re working through infrastructure and planning on that and working with several interested commercial, retail, professional and office-type users for that area.”