Lawrence approves $200M megawarehouse
Tenant still a mystery, but suspicions and clues point to Amazon
TOWN OF LAWRENCE - Town officials this week approved plans to build a five-story, 2.9 million-square-foot warehouse off Freedom Road amid tense debate among residents.
Trammell Crow Co., a national real estate developer based in Dallas, requested approval to build the 90-foottall distribution center on 110 acres of a 150-acre site in the Town of Lawrence, a Brown County community south of Green Bay.
The Lawrence Town Board voted 4-1 to approve the project following more than two hours of presentations, public comments and debate among supervisors.
The issue has been a major topic of debate among town residents, especially those who live near the site, for several months.
The development, nicknamed Project Badger, would cost an estimated $200 million to build. It would employ 1,500 people full time and operate around the clock.
Trammell Crow officials have not named the tenant for whom the distribution center is being developed, saying it will share more information “once we get further along in the development process.”
Some residents opposed to the development have said in public hearings they suspect it will be an Amazon warehouse.
Planning documents, project details and construction plans submitted to the town don’t identify the tenant, but they do provide a few clues that support residents’ suspicion.
The building plans include examples of colors and materials to be used on the warehouse. Several documents note a blue strip across the building matches colors used in planning documents from other Amazon warehouses, a color referred to on some websites as Amazon Prime Blue. The building plans also closely resemble a 2.9 million-squarefoot warehouse being built for Amazon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
An Amazon spokesperson on Tuesday told the Green Bay Press-Gazette the company does not provide information on future development plans, while adding Amazon is “constantly exploring new locations and weighing a variety of factors when deciding where to develop sites to best serve customers.”
This is not the first time northeastern Wisconsin communities have watched a warehouse project move forward without knowing much about the end user. The walls of a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in Greenville, in Outagamie
County, started to rise in early 2020 and it was not until summer that it was confirmed as an Amazon warehouse.
Amazon Delivery began operations in Greenville by the end of July. That operation provides the “last mile” delivery service Trammell Crow said the Lawrence warehouse would not.
Opponents of the Lawrence warehouse proposal said traffic, truck noise, the building’s size and its location would not fit in a part of the town, southwest of Green Bay, where families have lived for 20 years and more housing development is coming. They have pushed the town to pursue things like shops, clinics, parks and restaurants for the site, which is currently farmland that surrounds a Kwik Trip convenience store on Freedom Road.
Trammell Crow representatives said they listened to residents’ concerns and tried to address them by modifying site plan details such as keeping truck traffic off Williams Grant Drive and raising a landscape berm’s height. Trammell Crow also said it plans to continue discussions with town officials about donating land for a public park.
Supporters of the Lawrence warehouse tout the need for tax base and believe it will spur the kind of hotels, restaurants and other developments residents want to see in the town. They noted the residents live north and west of the site, which will direct most operations toward the south and east.
Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @GBstreetwise.