In what may become more common in the race for cities and counties to meet the affordable housing crisis, Sturgeon Bay Common Council has tentatively agreed to donate two city-owned lots in the industrial park to the Door County Economic Development Corporation (DCEDC) for a modular-home manufacturing facility.
Julie Schmelzer, DCEDC’s director of business development, said the facility would address an affordable-housing shortage and a lack of construction workers in the county and northeastern Wisconsin. It would factory produce smaller, lower-cost homes using student apprentices. Schmelzer said they’re working on a plan to partner with the Door County Homebuilders Association and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, which would provide homebuilding certificates for students working at the facility because they’d be learning skills such as drywalling and roofing.
“As they graduate, they can help fill those contractor jobs,” she said.
By building the homes on production scale and using students as apprentices, they believe the facility could generate homes with prices between $99,000 and $159,000.
The one pitfall to this may be the city is looking for a non-profit to open the factory. Starting and making a success of opening a modular home plant is not something many, if any, non-profits know much about and the “consultants” that will approach them as soon as they hear about it may be the worst thing factory management could get sucked into.
Look for more of these enticements by local governments but my advice is to approach successful factory owners to give this opportunity, otherwise, you may have a nice new building and no tenant after a year or so.
Gary Fleisher is Editor in Chief of Modular Home Source and the Offsite Builder. Email at [email protected]
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