Marathon County staff outline offers and site options for relocating highway facility in Kronenwetter; committees vote to go into closed session

Marathon County staff on Tuesday presented appraisals and three offers to purchase parcels in the Village of Kronenwetter as potential locations for a relocated county highway facility and the Human Resources, Finance and Property Committee and the Infrastructure Committee voted separately to go into closed session to discuss negotiating strategy.

County facilities manager Jim Grisbach and appraiser Noah Phillips summarized redevelopment options for the county’s existing highway site and compared costs and values for moving to a new site. Phillips said an appraisal scenario that assumes clearing all buildings and selling 12.39 acres as vacant development land produced values “about a hundred thousand dollars an acre.”

The presentations matter because the county could either rebuild at its existing site or sell that property and buy new land. Noah Phillips told the committees that subdividing frontage along Seventeenth Street would likely produce much higher per-acre prices than selling the 12.39-acre parcel as a single lot, increasing potential return if the county pursued phased commercial and multifamily redevelopment.

County staff provided three specific offers that are before…