Regional development group highlights talent campaigns, developer outreach and early work on a regional housing fund

Angel Laidlaw, a regional economic-development representative, told the Marathon County Extension Education and Economic Development Committee on March 6 that the organization is pushing several initiatives to attract workers and developers to Central Wisconsin.

Laidlaw said the group has launched a talent-attraction brand called “Central to Success” and a related website; runs an annual developer tour that brings 10–12 outside developers to see local reuse and redevelopment projects; and is compiling materials and a free marketing toolkit for municipalities and small businesses. “We built what we called Central to Success,” Laidlaw said, describing the website and outreach as a way to “feature local stories” to potential residents and businesses.

The committee was given early details about a regional housing study and possible creation of a regional housing fund to address what Laidlaw described as a capital-stack problem for developers. Laidlaw said developers told her that lower local rent and sale prices, higher shipping and labor costs for construction and limited local capital make projects less profitable than in larger metro areas; she cited examples in other Wisconsin counties where private and mixed public–private funds were assembled to support housing development.

Laidlaw said some peer counties built funds in the neighborhood of $10,000,000 and used them to subsidize projects that meet locally defined criteria. “We are still in research phase,” she said, adding that the regional planning commission’s housing study will feed into whatever proposal emerges and that interested municipalities and private investors will be consulted before any fund is proposed.

Committee members pressed for more detail about how such a fund would work and who would oversee it; Laidlaw said the project team has interviewed more than a dozen developers and is drafting a rubric for project eligibility and capital-stacking uses. County officials also asked whether the group’s development outreach has produced concrete leads; Laidlaw said two developers — one for Wausau and one for Stevens Point — said yes after recent developer tours and are working with those communities.

Laidlaw also described other ongoing work: industry and manufacturing briefings, workforce-summit programming (including refugee engagement and health-care cost panels), and municipality-focused events intended to boost rural development capacity. She invited county officials to upcoming events and said slide materials would be shared with staff.

Laidlaw’s presentation and the committee’s questions are ongoing work items; no formal county action was taken during the meeting.