Dunn County economic development director prioritizes housing and business retention in 2025 work plan

Dunn County’s economic development director reported to the Community Resources & Tourism Committee on a 2025 work plan that prioritizes housing and business retention, plus outreach to villages and entrepreneurs.

Adam (Dunn County economic development director) said housing will take about 25% of his time this year because the county needs to move the housing agenda before achieving other development goals. “We allocated about 25% of my capacity into housing,” Adam said. He added that roughly 20% of his time will be devoted to business retention and expansion, including a stated deliverable to conduct at least one business-retention visit in every village in the county.

Adam said other priorities include connecting entrepreneurs to existing resources such as the Small Business Development Center and the regional revolving loan fund; he noted Dunn County’s lower relative uptake of those services during recent years. “Dunn County is very light on our uptake of the services … as well as placing last in dollars given from the regional business fund,” he said, summarizing data from grant and small-business partners.

Adam said about 15% of his time will go to small-business and entrepreneurship work (connecting businesses to resources, grants and the regional revolving loan fund), 10% to business attraction (responding to information requests and potential site searches), and the remaining time to operations and administration including roles as executive director of local development organizations.

He reported ongoing engagement with Colfax (industrial park interest), the village of Wheeler, Elk Mound, Boyceville and initial outreach to Downing and Ridgeland. Adam said his role is to act as a liaison between developers and communities rather than to develop sites directly.

The committee had no substantive questions and moved on to other agenda items.