‘Area’s going to go nuts’

Foxconn fuels interest in Mount Pleasant land.

The prospect of a massive Foxconn factory sprawling over 1,200 acres in Mount Pleasant, employing thousands and prompting spillover development by suppliers, has yet to spark a Racine County real estate gold rush.

But signs of rising interest are mounting.

Land owners have bumped up asking prices. Hotel developers are sniffing around. Inquiries about properties are increasing.

“In my entire career, I have never been so close to something as spectacular as this,” said 40-year real estate veteran Terrance Tynan, who owns nearly 6 acres just east of I-94, south of Highway 20 and across the frontage road from a building Foxconn is leasing. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” Others voice similar optimism. “The whole area’s going to go nuts,” said Thomas Hribar, who has been fielding inquiries on more than 100 acres of farmland he holds adjacent to his truck sales company just east of the interstate.

“I’d be willing to bet in the next five years you won’t be able to see any bare land between the state line and Milwaukee,” Hribar said.

Maybe. But for now, while the level of interest may be, as one broker put it, “amazing,” other real estate professionals say potential buyers for the most part are huddled on the sidelines, watching.

“I think it might be a little early for all of the Foxconn stuff yet,” said Hans Zietlow, director of real estate for

convenience store chain Kwik Trip Inc., which is selling 2 acres it owns near the I-94 interchange at Highway 20.

Kwik Trip acquired the parcel, which includes a vacant Shell station and store, about a year ago as part of the package purchase of three convenience stores and is selling it because the company already has an outlet across the street. Inquiries have come in from potential buyers talking about putting up restaurants and hotels, Zietlow said.

So far, it’s just talk, but if the Foxconn project keeps moving forward, such development is virtually certain.

“That activity has already begun,” said Rick Norton, president of IPD Hospitality Inc.

Based near Atlanta, Ga., IPD is building a 98-room Holiday Inn Express about a quarter-mile south of Kwik Trip’s parcel. Norton’s project predates Foxconn, but as a franchisee of the company that has Holiday Inn and eight other hotel brands, he must be told when applicants are seeking franchises to open one of those hotels nearby.

“I’ve received two notices already that people are looking, wanting (to be) in the area,” Norton said.

Tynan had his parcel on the market for just under $1.3 million last February. With the Foxconn project gathering momentum, he raised the price in September and again in November, to $1.6 million. He also owns property farther away that he is advertising as “10 minutes from Foxconn.”

Closer to the planned factory site, Tom Squier, an agent with Shorewest Realtors Inc., is representing the owner of 29 acres just southwest of the I-94 interchange at Highway 11.

The land failed to attract “any real activity” when it went on the market three years ago, Squier said. But since listing it in mid-October for $2 million — the same price as before — Squier now has competing offers and believes he will get the asking price or close to it.

“There’s more and more interest in the property,” he said.

He said one potential buyer has talked about locating a truck stop and warehousing at the site. The other is contemplating a hotel and retail, Squier said.

Foxconn is “shining a much brighter light” on a Racine-Kenosha County real estate market that has already been growing, with such notable developments as the 1.5-million-square foot Amazon distribution center in Kenosha, said Bob Smietana, CEO of HSS Commercial Real Estate, developer of the Park 94 business park in Mount Pleasant.

The market now is drawing regional and national attention among real estate professionals, Smietana said.

Paul McBride, a broker with Founders 3, said Foxconn will “create a huge boom in that market, there’s no question about it.”

But McBride, whose firm has 37,000 square feet of industrial and warehouse space for lease in the Grandview Business Park just west of I-94 in the Town of Yorkville, said it’s still early. One factor tempering interest in industrial property, he said, is uncertainty over whether Foxconn will want all of its suppliers to be “captive” on its own site.

Still, McBride said he would “love to have tons more” real estate in the area.

That has been Jeffrey Rothbart’s approach. The managing director of Northbrook, Ill.-based Stack Real Estate LLC, Rothbart started putting together land in Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant — 121 acres in three parcels — before Foxconn announced its site. He since has added a site in Caledonia, giving him control of 222 acres in the three communities.

“I wouldn’t have tied up these industrial parcels but for Foxconn,” Rothbart said.

The level of potential-buyer activity hasn’t yet been what he expected, but Rothbart isn’t worried.

“It will be,” he said.