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Manufacturing Space

The Sturgeon Bay Industrial Park is growing, just in time to make space for expanding companies.

Hatco, a commercial kitchen products manufacturer, is adding 65,000 square-feet of production, office and training space, said Bill Chaudoir, executive director of the Door County Economic Development Corporation. The company currently employs about 300 people, and although Chaudoir said it has no plans to add jobs immediately, it likely will in the future.

Other expanding companies include Thermatronics, a finishing systems manufacturer completing a 10,000 square-feet expansion; HTF, a furnace manufacturer that added about 12,000 square-feet; and NEW Industries, a machine parts manufacturer.

To help keep up with demand for space, the city of Sturgeon Bay purchased 24.6 acres of adjacent farm and forestland for about $15,000 an acre.

“We were getting fewer and fewer lots available,” said Sturgeon Bay community development director Marty Olejniczak. “If we get someone who’s looking to do something, we want to be able to move. That’s when we got serious about acquiring additional property.”

Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) currently runs a natural gas pipeline through the new property, but is in the process of upgrading the line and moving it to run along Neenah Avenue instead of cutting across the field.

“[The pipeline] really hindered future industrial-type development,” Olejniczak said. “By these two things happening simultaneously we’re able to find a new site for WPS and be able to have this line relocated into a better area, and that would make the area ready for future development.”

WPS has also proposed moving its gate station from its location on the northeast corner of Neenah Street and Yew Street to the south end of the industrial park.

The industrial park is a space zoned to accommodate manufacturing businesses that don’t need to be in pedestrian areas or near major highways.

“It’s about getting tax base and jobs, and we’ve been pretty successful,”Olejniczak said. “A lot of the businesses in that industrial park have done well, even in the recession.”

Olejniczak said having the space available for manufacturing helps bring business to the city as new companies emerge and existing companies look for new space.

“Most of our stuff has been homegrown, occasionally you get a new business coming in, but a lot of our stuff is small companies that expand,” he said. “We’ll go after the big businesses looking to relocate, but more often than not we find good success trying to grow our own.”

Chaudoir said having a manufacturing presence in Door County’s economy helps keep it stable.

“Too many people don’t understand that Door County is way more than just tourism now,” Chaudoir said. “Beyond shipbuilding, which is significant, we have a couple dozen businesses in the industrial park that provide a lot of jobs and tax base and economic balance to the economy. We’d be in trouble as a community if we only had the tourism industry because it’s so seasonal. Manufacturing is very much less seasonal.”