Barry sees I-94 corridor as prolific hub
Over the coming months, the vacant fields along I-94 in Racine and Kenosha counties will become a crane farm, ripe for rubberneckers passing along the highway.
And that’s just fine by Jim Barry III.
The president of The Barry Co. in Milwaukee has been negotiating commercial development deals in and around the I-94 corridor between Brew City and the Illinois border for years.
Of course, none of those deals compares in scope, impact or magnitude with the Foxconn Technology Group’s mammoth production complex in Mount Pleasant.
Barry says the Foxconn project is sure to spark more development along the corridor, which is already home to large plants and distribution centers by Amazon, ULine, Haribo, Insinkerator, Seda North America and more.
“I think we are shifting the paradigm in Wisconsin,” Barry said. “I’m bullish on the I-94 corridor. I think it is an extremely important corridor. The distribution dynamics are tremendous. All the essentials are in place.”
Barry cites a handful of factors that are driving the development of the corridor:
❚ The land on the Wisconsin side of the border is cheaper than the land in suburban Chicago.
❚ Traffic congestion is lighter on the Wisconsin side of the border.
❚ Wisconsin’s regulatory climate is “more businessfriendly” than Illinois’ climate.
❚ Willing, cooperative public partners in communities such as Oak Creek, Racine, Mount Pleasant, Pleasant Prairie and Kenosha are attractive to developers and other businesses.
“The (state’s) decision to widen and modernize I-94 south from Milwaukee to the Illinois border was a smart and prescient economic development decision,” Barry said, adding that Wisconsin’s block of distribution centers is creating a “thriving, interconnected and world-class” business hub.
“Say goodbye to the adult bookstores, fireworks shops and haunted houses that used to line this corridor, as they make way for progress,” Barry said.
In addition to the ongoing development of the I-94 corridor, I asked Barry to create a C-Level “listicle” of
other emerging trends on the Wisconsin commercial real estate horizon. Here they are:
1. Continued strong demand for industrial property as retail space users continue to shift to industrial space. “Wisconsin will continue to see this shift occur, not only in the development of large distribution buildings, but also in the development and repurposing of smaller industrial buildings for ‘last mile’ retail distribution requirements. This will cause the already-low industrial vacancy rate to remain relatively low,” Barry said.
2. Downtown Milwaukee will continue its positive transformation. “By all accounts, there has been an unprecedented amount of major civic, business and residential development in downtown Milwaukee during the past several years, which is rapidly transforming the look and feel of the city. One can already see this happening in the area around the new Bucks arena, where obsolete industrial, retail and residential buildings are being repurposed and upgraded to higher and better uses,” Barry said. “The same trend will pertain in areas such as the Fifth Ward, Bay View, the Harbor District, Bronzeville and in other areas where important catalytic projects are underway. One way to further accelerate this trend would be to continue the pipeline of large catalytic projects, such as an expansion of the Milwaukee convention center, which, in turn, will spark a resurgence in adjacent real estate.”
3. Developers will continue to flock to municipalities that are proactive in their economic development efforts and shun those who are not. “Real estate developers are tending more to do business only with those municipalities that want to do business with them. These communities can expect to see more investment in the coming years. But there are also some municipal governments who are either hostile to development or make the process so cumbersome and so adversarial that it ends up not being worth it to the developer,” Barry said.
4. Users of office space will continue to “downsize” and “rightsize.” Barry said, “The amount of square footage per office worker has declined dramatically in recent years as office users seek to squeeze more out of the space they use.”
5. Property and income tax reform will unleash even more new real estate development. “Our extraordinarily burdensome property and income tax system hangs on the real estate development community like a wet blanket. These taxes are simply too high relative to most of the rest of the country and even neighboring states, such as our beleaguered neighbor Illinois,” Barry said. “We need common sense reform for our tax system that would bring property and income taxes more in line with the national averages, perhaps by a corresponding increase in the state sales taxes.”
Steve Jagler is the business editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. C-Level stands for high-ranking executives, typically those with “chief” in their titles. Send C-Level column ideas to him at steve.jagler@journalsentinel.com.