Browsing: Economic Development

Wisconsin and Ontario are both manufacturing centers with similar economic strengths and vulnerabilities. The Badger State should learn from Ontario’s mistakes.

Subjecting big development proposals to popular vote risks killing statewide economic growth, observers say in the wake of a successful effort by Port Washington data center opponents to give citizens the ability to nix the future use of a key financing tool.

From 2011 to 2024, Wisconsin counties beat their Illinois counterparts 103 percent to 68 percent in private-sector economic output.

The most recent Marquette Law School poll shows public opinion turning against data centers.

A bill that will ultimately help increase housing supply, make homes more affordable and still allow local municipalities to control where and how fast they grow passed through the Wisconsin Senate this week and was expected to pass in the Assembly Thursday as well.

The state Assembly this week passed a bill barring data centers from passing on any utility costs to other ratepayers in Wisconsin — targeting a key objection from Wisconsinites who oppose data center development.

Assembly Bill 840, passed 53-44 almost entirely along party lines, also requires new data centers to use water-conserving technology for cooling and to report annual water use to the Department of Natural Resources.

Impacts are minimal in comparison to what might have occurred Seldom if ever conceded by many critics of the planned $15 billion 672-acre data center under way in…

Plans for a municipally-owned grocery store in Madison is the perfect illustration of why government should stay out of an intensely competitive business it knows nothing about.

The City of Milwaukee is willing to pay a new marketing and communications officer for The Hop, its little-used $128 million streetcar, up to $108,000 per year plus benefits.

Technical college graduates and small business owners will be big winners in the massive Vantage Data Centers development soon expected to become the largest employer in Port Washington.

The biggest data centers planned for Wisconsin are not a threat to local water systems or to Lake Michigan — a fact opponents either can’t believe or won’t admit.

New nuclear measure in Wisconsin includes shifts in state’s priorities in law for ‘only way we keep lights on.’

After a storm of controversy surrounding the old Egg Harbor property, the owner of the Alpine Resort no longer thinks it’s “worth it” to make his home among such neighbors.

Business leaders and educators are concerned about the future of the workforce in the Badger State — and debating whether many young Wisconsinites are just lazy.

Racine County led the state in the rate of new construction in 2024, data published by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue show.

A new requirement to hire a “special inspector” to be on hand during construction will add an estimated $20,000 to any store, school, office, factory or apartment building in the Wisconsin.

The Vantage Data Center in Port Washington is on its way to becoming the largest single energy user in state history — an indication of the immense power needs of the five data centers in the works in Wisconsin.

As a Wisconsin stewardship program is up for renewal, northern counties’ budgets, economies are squeezed by how much land already is taken out of equation

Despite a much ballyhooed second line added last April, ridership on Milwaukee’s financially challenged streetcar, the Hop, last year was still nearly 30% below that of pre-COVID 2019.

Wisconsin’s governor talks of new 9.8% top tax rate — one that would wallop businesses that don’t flee.