Tim Casey knows the challenge of finding an apartment in Kenosha firsthand. He rented an apartment when he was hired as the city’s development director in the fall of 2020 and just recently completed the process of finding a new one.
“You’ve got to move quickly on apartments in Kenosha because the vacancy rates are very, very low and the product goes very quickly when it does become available,” Casey said.
Casey’s housing search is just a small look into one of the biggest challenges facing Kenosha County. In the past decade, the county has seen some of the most robust job growth in the state. Pre-pandemic, Kenosha County private sector employment had grown more than 36% since 2010, adding more than 15,000 jobs.
It was the fourth most jobs added by any county in the state and the strongest percentage increase among the 25 largest counties.
The county has even surpassed its pre-pandemic employment levels after initially shedding more than 8,100 jobs in April 2020.
The state of Wisconsin, which had grown employment 12.6% since 2010, is yet to return to its early 2020 levels.
For all of its job growth and the big economic development announcements and construction projects that led to it, Kenosha County saw sluggish population growth over the past decade. The county added 2,275 residents from 2010 to 2020, an increase of just 1.6% to 169,151.
Most of the county’s population growth has been in the village of Pleasant Prairie, which added 1,531 residents, a nearly 7.8% increase. The city of Kenosha added only 768 residents, an almost 0.8% increase. The rest of Kenosha County, excluding the city and Pleasant Prairie, added just 426 residents, a 0.9% increase from 2010.
Wisconsin’s population, meanwhile, grew a little more than 3.6% in the past decade and the U.S. grew 7.4%.
Todd Battle, president of the Kenosha Area Business Alliance, described the problem as “mission critical” when asked how important it is for Kenosha County to see stronger population growth in the coming years.
Battle described the county’s lack of population growth as perplexing. Sure, Kenosha is in the Upper Midwest, not the south or southwest areas that have seen robust growth. The county, like others in the state and region, is fighting against aging population and lower household formation. But it is also positioned at the edge of Chicagoland and the state of Illinois, which have seen out-migration in recent years.
“This area seems to have good attributes, it seems to have some natural advantages, it’s got economic development and business growth, it’s growing in terms of economic opportunity. Why wouldn’t its population base be growing at a healthier clip?” Battle said.
It’s not just that Kenosha is lagging Sun Belt areas. Battle pointed out other smaller cities are doing well. Fort Collins, Colorado, grew 18% in the past decade to reach almost 170,000 people, and Boise, Idaho, reached more than 235,600, an increase of 14.6%.
Within the Midwest, Olmsted County, Minnesota, home to Rochester, grew 12.9% to almost 163,000, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, grew 5.8% to almost 199,000.
“They blow our doors off,” Battle said.
Kenosha did outpace Rockford, Illinois, which lost more than 4,200 residents to dip below 150,000, and Aurora, Illinois, lost more than 17,000 residents, bringing its population to around 180,500. The two Illinois counties closest to Kenosha – Lake and McHenry – saw growth of only 1.6% and 0.5%, respectively.
The figures from Illinois, and Lake and McHenry counties in particular, are part of the explanation for Kenosha County’s slow population growth.
Prior to the boom in job growth, Kenosha County was very much a bedroom community, Battle said. Many residents would drive to jobs in other counties every day. As the number of jobs has grown in the county, residents have had an opportunity to cut their commute and stay closer to home.
While there are certainly economic benefits to new jobs going to county residents, population growth isn’t inherently one of them.
A similar situation may have also played out in the reverse with companies. Many of Kenosha County’s economic development wins have come from luring Illinois businesses to come over the border.
While the companies may be making a 15-minute move to the north, the employees could be staying put in Illinois. Eventually they may move to Wisconsin too, but there can be a lag to that decision. Again, there may be economic benefits from new payrolls coming into the county and state and more money being spent with other businesses, but there is no immediate population growth.
“That’s definitely part of the story,” Battle said while still suggesting the county should have seen stronger population growth.
The lack of population growth is directly tied to the county’s available labor force, which Battle said is one of the major things holding the region back from even more growth. While it might be possible to make some progress by improving labor force participation, the county needs more people to truly move the needle.
“Really what it comes down to is your headcount, not your labor force participation rate,” Battle said. “So, we need more headcount.”
Attracting more people requires someplace for them to live, which means the county needs to figure out its housing situation.
“We need more housing and we need it faster and it needs to be better and it probably needs to be more affordable,” Battle said.
That’s where people like Casey enter the picture. Not just for his own experience searching for an apartment, but his daily work as Kenosha’s director of city development.
In his view, the population growth is coming.
“There’s going to be a very strong development curve of residential,” Casey said, pointing to 135 single-family lots currently in development across three subdivisions and more than 500 units of apartments.
He said developers are coming to Kenosha from Milwaukee and Chicago and proposing projects on specific sites. Those projects are in pre-development or conceptual stages, but the interest is there.
“As part of their due diligence, they are referencing or show us market studies that indicate very strong demand, both owned and rented, across a range of price points,” Casey said, noting the studies call for hundreds of new units in workforce and market-rate multi-family and in single-family homes.
He said part of the issue across Wisconsin was a lack of interest in land development for subdivisions coming out of the Great Recession because the category was hit so hard. While the multi-family sector has generally garnered more traction, Casey said he is encouraged to see single-family home development beginning to return.
Kenosha also has border agreements in place with neighboring municipalities that could add close to 2,000 acres of land from Somers and Bristol and potentially another 3,000 acres from Paris, providing more space for industrial development or quality locations for housing.
Even after more than a decade of growth, the county hasn’t slowed down. The city alone is currently home to construction on 2.2 million square feet of large industrial buildings being developed on spec.
“Just the fact that those buildings are going up is generating a lot of prospect activity,” Casey said of companies showing interest in the region.
More job growth could eventually jump start population growth in Kenosha County.
Kenosha’s population growth compared to similar-sized Midwestern cities
|
City
|
2010
Population
|
2020
Population
|
Change since 2010
|
Growth (%)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rochester, MN
|
106,769
|
121,395
|
14,626
|
13.7
|
|
Dearborn, MI
|
98,153
|
109,976
|
11,823
|
12.1
|
|
Champaign, IL
|
81,055
|
88,302
|
7,247
|
8.9
|
|
Ann Arbor, MI
|
113,934
|
123,851
|
9,917
|
8.7
|
|
Bloomington, MN
|
82,893
|
89,987
|
7,094
|
8.6
|
|
Troy, MI
|
80,980
|
87,294
|
6,314
|
7.8
|
|
Elgin, IL
|
108,188
|
114,797
|
6,609
|
6.1
|
|
Sioux City, IA
|
82,684
|
85,797
|
3,113
|
3.8
|
|
Green Bay, WI
|
104,057
|
107,395
|
3,338
|
3.2
|
|
South Bend, IN
|
101,168
|
103,453
|
2,285
|
2.3
|
|
Davenport, IA
|
99,685
|
101,724
|
2,039
|
2.1
|
|
Cicero, IL
|
83,891
|
85,268
|
1,377
|
1.6
|
|
Westland, MI
|
84,094
|
85,420
|
1,326
|
1.6
|
|
Kenosha, WI
|
99,218
|
99,986
|
768
|
0.8
|
|
Duluth, MN
|
86,265
|
86,697
|
432
|
0.5
|
|
Waukegan, IL
|
89,078
|
89,321
|
243
|
0.3
|
|
Evansville, IN
|
117,429
|
117,298
|
-131
|
-0.1
|
|
Lansing, MI
|
114,297
|
112,644
|
-1,653
|
-1.5
|
|
Livonia, MI
|
96,942
|
95,535
|
-1,407
|
-1.5
|
|
Bloomington, IN
|
80,405
|
79,168
|
-1,237
|
-1.5
|
|
Springfield, IL
|
116,250
|
114,394
|
-1,856
|
-1.6
|
|
Peoria, IL
|
115,007
|
113,150
|
-1,857
|
-1.6
|
|
Hammond, IN
|
80,830
|
77,879
|
-2,951
|
-3.7
|
|
Gary, IN
|
80,294
|
69,093
|
-11,201
|
-14.0
|
|
Flint, MI
|
102,434
|
81,252
|
-21,182
|
-20.7
|
