Despite the recent announcement that Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc. has dropped plans to build a regional mall at the Pabst Farms development at Highway 67 and Interstate 94 in Oconomowoc, development of other areas of Pabst Farms continues to progress.
A group of investors, including some of the principals of Milwaukee-based The Dickman Company Inc., plans to build three multi-tenant light industrial buildings on a 13-acre lot at the northwest corner of Blue Ribbon Circle North and Delafield Road in the Pabst Farms Commerce Centre, which is located southwest of I-94 and Highway 67. One of the light industrial buildings will have 30,000 square feet of space, and the other two will each have 52,500 square feet, for a total of 135,000 square feet.
The development will be just north of the Roundy’s distribution center in Pabst Farms and just west of a development being planned by Fitchburg-based S&L Hospitality that would include two hotels, a 40,000-square-foot office building and a stand-alone restaurant.
The 30,000-square-foot building will be built first, and construction will begin this fall or early next spring, said Sam Dickman Sr., president of The Dickman Company and one of the investors for the proposed Pabst Farms light industrial buildings. The Dickman Company is also handling the brokerage for the buildings.
"We’re currently negotiating with a tenant for about 25 percent of the (30,000-square-foot) building," Dickman said. "The first tenant is scheduled to move in in June or July."
Construction of the other buildings will begin when more tenants are lined up, he said.
Brookfield-based Briohn Building Corp. is the general contractor and architect for the project.
There is a lack of available sites in the Milwaukee area with freeway access and infrastructure in place for new industrial development. That makes the Pabst Farms site attractive.
"We think that the whole (Pabst Farms) development is really going to move the center of commercial activity in the Milwaukee area to the west," Dickman said.
