Business View Magazine | September 2020

313 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2020 MANI TOWOC , WI SCONS IN are several companies currently investing in the core area. Forefront Dermatology is one of the largest, with about 100 clinics around Florida and the Midwest. They have a call center and their main lab in downtown Manitowoc. Progress Lakeshore is an economic development organization – a partnership of private businesses and local municipal partners throughout Manitowoc County. The organization’s Executive Director, Peter Wills, explains, “Workforce talent attraction – that’s our number one priority. To help promote that, we are working with partners on Coolestcoast.com. It’s a website featuring the great things about Manitowoc. Like many communities, we lost a number of our large manufacturers years ago, so one of the key things we’ve done is to attract new business to reuse the former Manitowoc Company crane facility, which the company exited in 2016. In 2018, Robinson Metal relocated here from De Pere, Wisconsin and expanded. Then, in 2019, Alliance Laundry took over the remainder of that facility. They are one of the largest producers of commercial washing machines. So in addition to the downtown, the outlying manufacturing facilities are also getting reused.” Businesses are attracted to Manitowoc for its central location, 30 minutes from Green Bay and Sheboygan, right off of 1-43, making it convenient for manufacturing, for workforce, and for retail. In the renewable energy sector, Broadwind Towers is one of the largest producers of utility scale steel wind energy towers in North America and has a large manufacturing plant in a former shipbuilding facility in Manitowoc. And a new 159,000-sq.-ft. Meijer supercenter just opened in the city. That was an investment of over $14 million. Tegen reports, “Another new development was a former golf course that was owned by a non-profit and has recently been undergoing redevelopment. The city has worked through Tax Increment Financing on a public-private partnership to put in new infrastructure for Executive Director, Peter Wills