MLG Development, part of Brookfield-based MLG Companies, is working on plans to develop a business park on a 380-acre site southwest of Silver Spring Drive (County Highway VV) and Highway 164 on the west side of Sussex.
MLG has an accepted offer the purchase the property, said MLG president J. Michael Mooney. The company will seek tax incremental financing (TIF) from the village for the project, he said.
“A public-private partnership is necessary for this project,” Mooney said. MLG has indicated that it will seek TIF for the project, but has not determined a specific amount, he said.
The business park will be “upscale,” Mooney said with a mix of industrial, office, flex, warehousing and multi-family residential development.
Sussex is an appealing place for a business park, because it is fairly easy to get to and a lot of business owners and executives live in Waukesha County, Mooney said.
Commercial real estate development has declined significantly since the beginning of the Great Recession and there has been virtually no new business park development in the metro Milwaukee area for years.
However, there are now few sites available for new buildings in the region’s existing business parks, Mooney said.
“We do not have an overabundance of ready-to-construct business park sites in the greater metro area,” he said. “We have tons of empty subdivision land, but we do not have much in the way of business park sites with road, sever and water already in.”
The region’s industrial real estate market has improved significantly this year as the manufacturing sector has recovered. That could create more demand for sites for new industrial buildings. The region’s industrial space vacancy rate is now at 7.6 percent, and has been on a steady decline since it peaked at 9.2 percent in the third quarter of 2010, according to Xceligent Inc. In Waukesha County, the industrial space vacancy rate is even lower, at 5.1 percent, according to Xceligent.
