County to consider buying land

By Kevin O’Brien

At next month’s Marathon County Board meeting, supervisors will review potential offers to purchase land somewhere in the Wausau area to be used for a proposed multimillion dollar Highway Department headquarters.

It’s unclear at this point if enough supervisors support the idea of constructing a facility that has been estimated to cost nearly $60 million (though the more recent estimates put the price tag closer to $40 to $45 million). However, after completing six different space use studies over the course of a decade, county officials are hoping that supervisors are ready to decide whether to move the current headquarters off of 17th Avenue and West Street in Wausau.

“The time has come for the county board to make a definitive decision about the future of this vital facility,” said supervisor Randy Fifrick, chair of the Infrastructure Committee. “We owe it to our staff, our community and our future operations to provide clarity and direction moving forward.”

Fifrick noted that the Highway Department continues to “patch things up” at the existing facility without knowing if it’s still going to be part of the county’s long-term plans.

Supervisor John Robinson, chair of the Human Resources, Finance and Capital Committee (HRFC), said relocating the existing Highway shop has been part of the county’s West Side Master Plan as far back as 2008, but “little progress has been made” in the past five years in finding a new location.

Meanwhile, Robinson said the Highway Department is trying to become more efficient by using larger vehicles, but without adequate space. He reiterated that county trucks have to remove their plow blades every night in order to fit inside the garage, only to put them back on in the morning.

Highway commissioner Jim Griesbach estimated that it costs a total of $140,000 per year in manpower just to hook and unhook the plows, which takes about 15 minutes twice a day during and after snowstorms.

The department’s current headquarters are contained to just 7.88 acres at the corner of 17th and West Street (not counting land shared with the Parks Department), but Griesbach said a space needs study done in 2015 indicated that a 240,000 square-foot facility is needed. Griesbach said the county has looked at 20 different sites for a new location that could provide the 40 acres needed for a new facility, but none of them worked out.

“You can’t put our Highway Department on just any 40-acre site in the county,” he said.

County administrator Lance Leonhard said the county had previously explored the possibility of co-locating the Highway Department with several other departments, but that idea has been abandoned after several of those departments have moved to the county’s Lake View Drive campus in Wausau.

Besides the space constraints at the current headquarters, Griesbach said he has safety concerns with the location, which is just north of a busy Kwik Trip and also down the street from John Muir Middle School. Griesbach showed supervisors a video he took of a Highway truck waiting to pull out of the parking lot and noted the lack of visibility.

“We’re going to have more accidents at that intersection pulling out of there,” he said.

Griesbach also noted that the current site is cramped and not well laid out, leading to a “lack of flow” for work vehicles, a few of which have to be left outside in the elements.

“We can throw as much money as we want at this,” he said. “It does not fix the main issues of where we’re at and what we’re doing.”

The Eau Claire example

In February, a few county supervisors joined Griesbach and Leonhard on a tour of Eau Claire County’s new Highway Department headquarters, which includes a 140square-foot main building and 60,000 feet of additional building space on 23 acres of land.

Greisbach said the facility, which was completed in 2023, includes separate parking areas for heavy trucks, to keep them from getting tangled up with vendors, along with a 24-hour loading dock, a truck wash that can extend the life of vehicles by 20 percent and better storage for parts and equipment. He noted that a few employees who had previously quit came back to Eau Claire County because they wanted to work at the new headquarters.

Supervisor Chris Dickinson, who went on the tour, called the shop “wonderful” but “not over the top.” Still, he said he would like to see cost comparisons and plans for rebuilding Marathon County’s shop at its current site.

“The site that we currently have is in disrepair,” he said. “So, you’re going to have to either rebuild that or build another site.”

At the same time, Dickinson noted that the county is also talking about possibly building a new ice arena on the corner of 17th and West if the Highway shop moves – or, alternatively, redeveloping the site for private development.

“How does this all mesh together?” he said.

In response, Leonhard said earlier estimates for fixing up the facilities at the current site have been around $8 million, but that would not address the issues with the location itself. He promised to provide supervisors with all the information they need to weigh those options.

“That’s going to be a tough decision because it comes with trade-offs,” he said. “I’ll strive to have that information, as much as we can, in April.”

How do pay for it?

In working with the county’s financial advisors at PMA, Leonhard said county staff has developed a multi-pronged funding strategy to use $30 million from the Highway Reserve Fund and to borrow $15 million. That would cover what Griesbach called a “ballpark” estimate of $40 to $45 million recently provided by a construction firm based on concept drawings.

Finance director Sam Fenzke showed supervisors a few options for structuring the debt, including a 10-year bond that would initially add 6 cents per $1,000 onto the county’s mil rate before increasing to 18 cents. If the payback period was stretched to 20 years, the county would pay more in interest, but the impact on taxes would be lower, 5 to 8 cents per $1,000.

Both Fenzke and Leonhard said the goal with borrowing is always to minimize the fluctuations in taxes that property owners have to pay over time.

Eau Claire County borrowed the full $32 million it needed to build its new headquarter, Griesbach said, but he also noted that Marathon County has about twice as many miles of road to maintain so it will need a larger shop.

Supervisor Tim Sondelski said he spoke to Clark County’s highway commissioner, who recommended using a construction manager rather than a general contractor to save money. Leonhard said construction managers will definitely be engaged for the project, as they have been used successfully on the new regional forensic center and the Lake View Drive campus.

Looking ahead, if the board were to decide to purchase land in April or May, Leonhard said the county would spend about a year finding an architect, drawing up schematic designs and eventually developing detailed plans for contractors to review before submitting bids. Construction would take another year. Ultimately, though, it’s up to the board what direction the county goes.

“At any point, if the decision of the board is different, pardon the pun, but you can take an off-ramp,” he told supervisors.

A VIEW FROM ABOVE - Above is a side-by-side comparison of Marathon County’s current Highway Department shop on the corner of West Street and 17th Avenue, left, and the new Eau Claire County Highway Shop. Several county officials recently toured Eau Claire County’s new facility, which is located on a site that’s about three times the size of Marathon County’s current site. Marathon County supervisors will be presented with an offer to purchase land for a new shop next month.