New Certified Site in Holmen is endorsed as ready for development

The rapidly growing village of Holmen, in La Crosse County, is celebrating the designation of a Certified Site in the community—a status that sends a clear signal to industrial partners seeking build-ready land for their business needs.

“Qualification as a Certified Site is an important tool for attracting industrial tenants, since it means possible obstacles a business will encounter before becoming fully operational are identified and minimized,” says John W. Miller, secretary and CEO of WEDC, which administers the program in partnership with Site Selection Group (SSG).

Having a Certified Site within a given community can offer an economic boost, since it makes the community more appealing by accelerating the timeline for greenfield development. In competitive industrial site selection decisions, speed to market and having complete information up front can be make-or-break factors. building a factory or expanding a business.

The December announcement of Certified Site designation marked the culmination of a months-long process of conducting studies and gathering documentation. Along with WEDC and SSG, collaborators in the effort included the Village of Holmen and the La Crosse Area Development Corp.

To achieve Certified Site status, a network of community partners must work together with the owner of the site in question to document that the site satisfies a wide range of criteria related to zoning, utilities, environmental concerns, transportation/logistics links, and more. WEDC’s program provides communities and their development partners/stakeholders?) with technical assistance as they complete the process and also offers a reduced cost relative to what it would cost to attain the same certifications outside of the program.

“There’s no doubt that it speeds up the process,” Holmen Village Manager Scott Heinig says of the program. “Now we have at our fingertips all the data a business owner could need, whereas before we would have had to actually go and develop it.” Local officials note that in a sense, the Certified Site designation puts a stamp of approval on what they always knew was an appealing site. Holmen’s location north of La Crosse has low flood risk and easy access to major highways, offering quick connections to cites in both Wisconsin and Minnesota—and beyond. The community’s recent rapid population growth—and the addition of new housing in response—also create an auspicious outlook for hiring workers.

The Certified Site status covers the majority of the 100.9-acre site known as the North Holmen Industrial Park. While companies including Kwik Trip, XeteX, Dairyland, and Holmen Cheese have already moved in, around 60% of that land remains available for new builds.

Wisconsin currently has 16 available Certified Sites, including Holmen’s. The Certified Sites Program, which has been operating in Wisconsin for more than a decade, often pairs with other programs that provide incentives to businesses ready to build or move in. For example:

• Kwik Trip received performance-based Enterprise Zone Tax Credits from WEDC.
• Holmen Cheese used a local Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district to generate investment.
• XeteX worked with WEDC to secure a Business Development Tax Credit package, including up to $250,000 in performance-based state tax credits.

XeteX, a leading manufacturer of high quality industrial and commercial air handling and ventilation solutions, says moving into a shovel-ready site has been a game changer.

“The primary drivers for us were proximity to our old factory in La Crosse, the fact that the site was build-ready, and the WEDC assistance,” says XeteX CEO Andy Wilcox.