As Milwaukee Burger Company’s brand new restaurant opened for business in Wausau on Monday, Chris Ghidorzi, head of Property Development for Ghidorzi Companies, was heading to Milwaukee to showcase Wausau at the Wisconsin Retail Conference.

Milwaukee and Wausau aren’t the only common denominators here.  “Quiet Momentum” was the term Chris used to describe the retail environment of the Wausau Metro area – a storyline that has played out all week in the overflowing parking lot of the new restaurant.

Chris highlighted the groundswell of retail activity throughout Wausau Metro, including Panera Bread, Hobby Lobby, CVS, Toppers Pizza and numerous new Kwik Trip Convenience Stores, in addition to Dunkin’ Donuts and HuHot Mongolian Grill in the works.  Are any one of these developments the retail pinnacle indicating that Wausau has arrived?  No.  But together they embody the beauty of Wausau Metro:  we’re a work in progress, and a promising one at that according to the data, compiled from the U.S. Census, The Business News, MCDEVCO, the Wausau River District and NAI MLG Commercial.

To cite the population of Wausau proper at 40,000 is to grossly underestimate the mass of households within a 15-mile radius that procure everything from a tank of gas and loaf of bread to school clothes and a new car from Wausau Metro retailers.  Wausau’s trade population is a sizable 148,000, giving us the mass and scale to attract the next big thing(s).

The advice Chris gave to his audience of retailers and commercial brokers:  Get to Wausau and do your due diligence on the market.  With an average household income of $55,600 for the trade area, projected workforce growth of 20.7% in advanced manufacturing by 2020 and 19.7% in health care in the short-term, now is the time to consider the Wausau market.

Demand for skilled workers in IT has tripled graduates in this field of study at North Central Technical College with immediate placement into the local workforce.  Collaborative Consulting, which provides IT-based business planning, alone has hired 70 IT professionals in the last year with 130 more IT jobs to fill in 2014.

The driving force behind these numbers is a diverse economy that includes:

• Skilled Manufacturing:  Greenheck Fan Corporation, Wausau Window & Wall, Kolbe & Kolbe Millwork, Schuette Metals, representing 14,732 jobs.
• Health Care:  Aspirus, Ministry, Marshfield Clinic and United Health Care, representing 8,032 jobs
• Insurance:  Liberty Mutual, Nationwide and Church Mutual, representing 4,486 jobs.
• Tourism:  Marathon County ranks 11th of Wisconsin’s 72 counties with an annual spend of more than $195M.  Activity is driven by Granite Peak Ski Area, adult and youth sports tournaments (hockey, soccer, softball, basketball, curling, bowling) and our waters as a worldwide destination for whitewater rafting.The theme of the Wisconsin Retail Conference was A New Day in Retailing.  Our vantage point as the premier real estate developer in Central Wisconsin makes us confident that this theme will be played out in Wausau in the next 18-36 months with the addition of more exciting retail developments to meet the growing demands of our economy.  The development team at Ghidorzi Companies is always available to retailers, commercial brokers and entrepreneurs for market tours and insight.
  
  Chris Ghidorzi is Vice President of Ghidorzi Companies, a design build construction and real estate development firm with 1.5 million square feet of lease space, in addition to development parcels and a hotel group that includes nationally recognized Marriott properties. He also manages the company’s finances and loan portfolio.  His financial insight comes from the years he spent as Director of Equity Trading at Baird, a private equity firm with client assets of more than $105 billion.  He is a UW Madison School of Business graduate with a degree in Finance. 

  The 2014 Wisconsin Retail Conference, which is the state’s biggest and best annual retail convention, took place on April 8.  The event was presented by the Wisconsin chapters of NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association; CARW, the Commercial Association of Realtors; and ICSC, the International Council of Shopping Centers.