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City of Port Washington
Economic Development Newsletter
2016 Spring
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MAYOR'S MESSAGE
Dear City Business Partners:
I write this to you as we count down the days to Spring in our great City of Port Washington and we collectively look forward to an exciting 2016.
Before
we look ahead, however, this is an opportune time for us to pause and reflect upon what the last several years have meant for "Our Home Port." In truth, it has been a time of progress and change - progress and change that has been impactful for our city in the present, and laid the foundation for momentous times to come. Sometimes, we can be so busy that perhaps we allow ourselves to lose sight of all we've accomplished together. Some of those accomplishments involving our city's economic and community development efforts include the following:
- Our Main Street Business District continues with a definite rebirth and renewal, with an expanding business mix, minimal vacancies, and sustainable and exciting success stories. Our Main Street business owners and volunteers continue to help power this local renaissance. To be sure, Duluth Trading Company has also played an enormous role in this achievement. Those who questioned the ability of our City to attract and embrace and sustain a regional retail powerhouse have been silenced by the incredible success of Duluth here in Port Washington in just a few short years' time. And, just as our community has embraced Duluth, so too has Duluth embraced our community. The store's leadership and team members have actively supported numerous community causes, and that local support has been matched by company executives as well, who recognize and celebrate all our City has to offer as a place for doing business. In just two years, annual store traffic has exceeded 100,000 customers, an incredible volume that is indicative of the impact Duluth has had upon our downtown, our businesses, and our city as a whole.
- Our city business partners have worked hard not just to survive but to thrive, and as a result of that hard work, many now are in the position of growing and expanding, right here in Port. In fact, through our Economic Development Committee outreach efforts over the past several years, we've established stronger-than-ever relationships, especially with our manufacturing and industrial partners, one of the strongest providers of jobs and sustainers of wage growth and standard-of-living metrics in any community. In recent years, we have celebrated when the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "Top Workplaces" list honored four City of Port Washington Businesses - Allen-Edmonds, Ansay & Associates, Molded Dimensions, and Port Washington State Bank. No other community in Ozaukee County had more than one. And more recently, we celebrated successive "Large Business of the Year" Award recipients in Ozaukee County - Ansay & Associates in 2014 and Port Washington State Bank in 2015. As part of those awards presented by Ozaukee Economic Development, Modern Equipment was also named a finalist back in 2014. Franklin Energy, Kieckhaefer Manufacturing Company, Construction Forms, Kleen Test, Voeller, Cans-to-Go and so many other businesses who call Port home are making significant investments in themselves, their employees, and our city - and their substantial and continued investment in our community is difference-making. Companies that embrace Port Washington as their corporate headquarters - and then continue to strategically grow their footprint and their impact within the community bring employment, media value, visitors, and an elevated profile for our City. Businesses of all sizes in all areas and in all sectors throughout our city are succeeding and partnering with us, and thus are playing a critical role in our city's economic development efforts. On behalf of our city, I say THANK YOU!
- Our Community Development Authority, led by City Planner Randy Tetzlaff and Alderman Mike Ehrlich, helped drive forward a public, transparent, and deliberate master redevelopment planning process, one that is already paying dividends - and will throughout 2016 and the years to come. In fact, we know now that from the five identified strategic redevelopment priorities in our downtown lakefront business district, as a City we are positioned to realize in excess of $20 million in valuation increment. Possible development of three of those five identified redevelopment priorities is now being considered. On the north slip parking lot, we have an opportunity to create a unique year-round regional destination in the form of The Blues Factory. The former Victor's site has been purchased, and our City hopes to soon see plans for conceptual design of the vital necessary downtown residential for which our CDA master redevelopment vision called. And, we've renewed a dialogue with the owners of the long-vacant former grocery store property, with hopes of working together to advance a vision for new life in the space in the very near future, one that will truly benefit our entire community. From strategic and catalytic new retail and commercial to vital residential, varied in type and price point, we will bring more people into our beautiful downtown to live, work, play, and shop - making a lasting, profound difference for every business and taxpayer in our city.
I
join the members of our Economic Development Committee in thanking all of you, our city business partners, for your ongoing commitment to growing your own business in the months and years to come here in our great City of Port Washington. We appreciate your investment in our community and if at anytime we can be of help, please let us know!
Tom Mlada
Mayor- City of Port Washington
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2016 CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Over the past three years, our City of Port Washington EDC has been working very hard to personally connect and engage with our city business partners. We believe those efforts have paid dividends in the form of very strong business relationships, a more open dialogue, and active idea sharing.
We will expand upon these efforts in 2016.
Our 2016 Calendar of Events will center on the issues we've been hearing about from you. As our EDC has been reaching out to gauge your needs, you've been very willing to share, and for that we're very grateful. The primary issues we've been hearing about involve talent acquisition and retention/workforce development; available resource support, both local and statewide; and collaborative marketing opportunities.
To that end, we will be hosting two business forums and one major collaborative marketing event in 2016. Our tentative plan is as follows:
April 20th: Business Engagement Forum
- Focus: State of Wisconsin Office of Business Development
September 21st: Business Engagement Forum
- Focus: Advancing educational partnerships to grow and retain talent
October: Collaborative marketing event - "Produced in Port"
- Focus: celebrate 3-5 business partners with onsite public "open house" activities and host "public celebration and career fair" opportunity for all other city business partners (with specific focus on our industrial and manufacturing partners) at designated location
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UPDATE: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE WEBSITE
In late 2015, our EDC introduced its own webpage as part of our City of Port Washington website. If you've yet to visit, please take a moment to do so:
We created this Economic Development page on our City website in response to the requests our EDC members received from our city business partners for such a resource. Here, you can learn more about ongoing visioning initiatives, such as our Downtown Redevelopment Plan; explore programs available to you, including our Green Business Program and Revolving Loan Fund; access useful information such as current City demographics; and receive other updates, such as those surrounding our City Business Recognition Program (where you can now nominate a business in our City, including your own!). You can also find recent Economic Development Newsletters and recent EDC meeting minutes. As time permits, please visit our city website and share your thoughts on other items we can add to make the resource relevant and useful for you!
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OPPORTUNITY: REVOLVING LOAN FUND PROGRAM
Looking to expand or open a business in Port Washington? Looking for potential financing options? Consider our Port Washington Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Program. The program is set up as a gap financing program to work with your conventional financing. The program provides a low-interest loan for companies that will be creating new employment within the City of Port Washington. We have significant RLF dollars available and would love to speak with you about how we could partner in putting them to work for you!
Some Highlights of the RLF Program:
- Low interest loans - half of current prime rate.
- Terms - 7 years for working capital, 10 years for machinery or property acquisition.
- Job creation required - up to $20,000 per full-time job created.
- Needs to be part of a financing package, RLF funding can be up to 50% of project.
- Can't be utilized for construction or projects that have already started.
Examples of recent projects funded by the Port Washington RLF Program:
- Modern Equipment's purchase of their new property on Western Avenue.
- Prism Manufacturing's utilization of working capital as part of their move into the Simplicity building.
- Custom Wire Technology's acquisition of their new property on Sunset Drive.
For more information on the RLF program, please contact either Randy Tetzlaff at 262-284-2600 or [email protected] or Kathleen Schilling at 262-238-7730 or [email protected].
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UPDATE: BUSINESS RECOGNITION PROGRAM
In 2013, our City EDC launched a formal Business Recognition Program (BRP) to celebrate and thank successful businesses that have contributed in unique, significant, and sustainable ways to our city's overall economic well-being. Since then, we've acknowledged nine city business partners, the most recent being Biever Travel, Molded Dimensions, and Ansay & Associates in November. We'll announce our next BRP Award recipients in April, and look forward to celebrating them with their commemorative plaques. Additionally, we will recognize BRP Award recipients at City Council meetings, on our City website, and in our City e-Newsletter.
And now, via our new Economic Development webpage, we invite you to nominate a city business (including your own!) that you believe merits special recognition.
Criteria for being selected to receive a BRP Award includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Longevity - 20 or more years of operation in the City of Port Washington.
- Creation of new jobs over past 12 months or long-term efforts to provide high-quality jobs.
- Significant business growth or investment in future growth over past 12 months.
- Profound impact on the larger business community over the past 12 months.
- Introduction of a unique product or service innovation within its industry.
- Exceptional customer service, as indicated by its customers or business partners.
- Proven contributions to the enhancement of the community and/or locally operating charities (examples include high school mentoring/internship programs, support of community events, and employee volunteerism).
- Major renovation of, improvement to, or investment in existing buildings or structures.
- Construction of new permanent buildings or infrastructure supportive of office or retail space.
- Commitment to green business and sustainability practices (examples include waste reduction and recycling, water conservation and pollution prevention, energy efficiency and conservation).
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OPPORTUNITY: COMPANY OUTING
In 2015, our City of Port Washington had an additional very unique and special opportunity to celebrate: our city's partnership with Discovery World Science & Technology Center in the City of Milwaukee, enabling us to welcome the tall ship Denis Sullivan - the world's only recreation of a 19th century three-masted Great Lakes schooner that offers sails to the general public - for four scheduled Summer visits. Our city's partnership with Discovery World, bringing that amazing tall ship asset to ports other than Milwaukee for numerous engagements, was the first-of-its-kind for the organization, a true testament to our ability to advance such mutually-beneficial regional partnerships - and leverage them as opportunities to positively impact our city's economy. In all ways, the partnership was a tremendous success, with over 900 people sailing on the Sullivan during her four engagements here in Port over the Summer months, and over 600 others enjoying deck tours. Our City business partners reported a very noticeable impact from tourism spending. We were able to get Summer School students aboard for one sail in late June, and then used a day in early September to engage our Port Washington-Saukville School District 6th grade students. And, with great support and investment from several City business and organizational partners, including Ansay & Associates, Port Washington State Bank, Ozaukee Press, our Tourism Council, and our Business Improvement District, as well as some very favorable weather, we ended up realizing a net profit of about $25,000 from this past Summer's engagements - money we can now use to help fund our continued partnership in the upcoming Summer of 2016.
I believe Joel Brennan, president and CEO of Discovery World Science & Technology Center, captured it best in our shared announcement about the partnership when he declared: "It's an opportune time right now for this partnership because there's so much happening in Port."
And in 2016, our City of Port Washington is proud to advance that partnership with Discovery World Science & Technology Center, with four public sail engagements planned - two weekends in June, one weekend in mid-October, and a full week in September. While any of these visits will afford a memorable time for those who sail the Sullivan, September is an especially great time to enjoy some reinvigorating recreation out on Lake Michigan - in fact, as Captain Tiffany of the Denis Sullivan shared with me last Labor Day weekend during the ship's visit to Port Washington, it's the best time! Weather tends to be beautiful and winds are historically ideal for sailing. So, for you as city business partner, that means the September 2016 visit of the Denis Sullivan could present a perfect opportunity for a company outing or employee appreciation event! We can work directly with you to find a sail time that would work well, and with discounted per-ticket pricing in place for groups of 20 or more, it's a chance for you to enjoy a very memorable trip out of our beautiful lakefront! For more information or to reserve a block of seats, please contact me directly at
[email protected]. I look forward to working with you personally to ensure we meet your business needs!
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OPPORTUNITY: CITY OF PORT WASHINGTON EDC
Interested in chatting with us?
We'd welcome the opportunity to speak by phone or visit you onsite!
And, outside of personal conversations, our EDC meets the third Wednesday of each month, and we'd love to have our meeting onsite and enjoy an opportunity to speak with your leadership team and tour your facility!
We are here to partner, support, advocate, and listen - please contact us!
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