Food trucking company wants to build transit, cold-storage site near I-90/39-Milton Avenue interchange
A local trucking and logistics operator who hauls cheeses and other refrigerated foods wants to grow his operations in a property just off the Interstate 90/39 – Highway 26 interchange on the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ north end.
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New hotel proposal would bring 90 more rooms to Janesville's northeast side
JANESVILLE
A developerÃÛèÖÊÓƵ hotel on JanesvilleÃÛèÖÊÓƵ northeast side has consistently hit 80% room occupancy since 2019, even during the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic, a hotel operator said.
That has given the developer a taste for more—90 rooms more, to be exact.
If city powers approve it, a developer plans to build a 90-room hotel at 2702 Pontiac Place under the Tru by Hilton nameplate. The hotel would be built next to the TownePlace Suites extended-stay hotel.
West Bend developer Kraig Sadownikow, a partner in the proposed hotel, is part-owner of the TownePlace Suites, a Marriott hotel that was completed and opened in 2019.
Sadownikow wasn’t immediately available for comment Monday, but Benjamin Brantmeier, who manages the TownePlace Suites, said the hospitality industry in Janesville has begun to rebound out of the worst of the pandemic.
Brantmeier said as a whole, hotel occupancy rates in Janesville have improved. They’re averaging about 70% in recent weeks, although he said TownePlace has maintained an 80% to 85% occupancy rate throughout the pandemic.
Brantmeier said that has owners of his hotel eager to further tap JanesvilleÃÛèÖÊÓƵ hospitality market—one that has become more competitive in the past five years after two new hotels broke ground along the Interstate and downtown.
“At the end of January and first part of February, our hotel was oversold by 17 rooms for three days in a row. And we ended up lucky because one of our competitors had some rooms for us so we could relocate the guests to, but if this continues on, year over year, we’re going to need this (new Hilton) hotel sooner rather than later,†Brantmeier said.
The new hotel would bring JanesvilleÃÛèÖÊÓƵ hotel stock to about 900 rooms. That would bring the city closer to its previous high-water mark in the early 2000s of about 1,000 hotel rooms, according to city records.
The cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ plan commission will review a conditional-use permit for the project March 21. The project has been on the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ radar since before the pandemic hit in 2020, officials said.
If built, the hotel would be a Tru by Hilton, a brand more focused on shorter stays compared to its neighbor across the lot, the TownePlace. Brantmeier said Tru hotels tend to place more emphasis on onsite and lobby amenities such as dining and entertainment.
They’re aimed at appealing to business travelers and families in town for a few days or a weekend.
Christine Rebout, who heads the Janesville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that over the last year, her office has seen growing interest in overnight or weekend stays for arts and culture tourism.
She said her office finds itself now directing a growing number of tourists, from international travelers to womenÃÛèÖÊÓƵ clubs on weekend trips, some who she said are coming to town to check out newer painted murals in the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ downtown. To that can be added a return to form for youth sports tournaments, both local and regional, as the region starts to emerge from the wintertime grip of the pandemic.
Janesville long has been a hotel draw for families attending youth sports tournaments here and in nearby metros of Madison and Rockford, Illinois.
Talk of the new hotel comes as the city and group of private backers are considering whether to build the WoodmanÃÛèÖÊÓƵ Community Center, a proposed two-sheet ice arena and convention center at Uptown Janesville, the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ main mall on the northeast side.
Rebout said the new arena and 20,000-square-foot convention hall would generate millions of dollars of new tourism activity here, and it would bolster the local hotel sector.
The new Tru by Hilton would be clustered in the 1-mile area around the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ two main Interstate 90/39 interchanges at Humes Road and Milton Avenue, but it also would be less than a mile from the ice arena.
“If you look at something like an indoor athletic and conference center, we’d be bringing families for sports tournaments but also meeting and conference business in here on Tuesdays to Thursdays on a regular basis. That would create tremendous demand. That project will undoubtedly bring (new) hotels with it,†Rebout said.
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Rock County's COVID-19 risk level low after a week of few new positive tests
Low transmission rates of COVID-19 in Janesville and Beloit continued into the first week of March, with both cities combining to report fewer than 40 COVID-19 cases, Rock County Public Health Department data shows.
Janesville and Beloit combined to report 39 new COVID-19 cases since last week as COVID-19 hospitalizations and new case rates continue to remain low as the wave of cases caused by the more contagious omicron variant subsides.
Twenty-three new cases were identified in Janesville last week, bringing the citywide total to 15,541 cases. An additional 178 recoveries (15,051 total) and 194 additional negative tests (55,868 total) were also reported. JanesvilleÃÛèÖÊÓƵ COVID-19 mortality rate is 0.81%.
In Beloit, 16 new cases were reported since last week, bringing the citywide total to 11,855. An additional 109 recoveries (11,494 total) and 161 negative tests (38,900 total) were also recorded. The cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ mortality rate for COVID-19 is 1.05%, near where it has been for the duration of the pandemic.
Elsewhere in Rock County, Milton reported seven new cases (2,421 total), Evansville reported four new cases (1,881), Edgerton reported three new cases (2,426), Clinton reported one case (851) and no new cases were reported among residents in unincorporated areas of the county.
In total, Rock County has had 36,377 confirmed positive tests and 318 virus-related deaths since the pandemic began. As of Monday, 829 cases were active, well below the thousands of active cases reported during the surges caused by the delta and omicron virus variants.
As of Thursday, the day most recent data was available, a total of eight people in Rock County were hospitalized for COVID-19 in Rock County hospitals.
Between Feb. 27 and Saturday, Rock County reported 141 new cases and a test positivity rate of 4.8% as 73% of people age 5 and older are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
Compared to the previous seven-day reporting period, new cases were down 28.7%, the test positivity rate had fallen 3.4 percentage points and hospitalizations decreased by 25% countywide, CDC data shows.
The CDCÃÛèÖÊÓƵ latest metric for determining COVID-19 transmission, known as the COVID-19 Community Levels, shows that Rock County has a low risk designation. The new guidelines were announced recently as part of a push to loosen masking requirements based on improving virus conditions nationwide.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) warms up before an NFL divisional playoff football game against the San Francisco 49ers, Saturday, Jan 22. 2022, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
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Janesville trucking terminal plan gets nod despite traffic concerns
JANESVILLE
A local cheese hauler is a notch closer to having his cheddar and trucking it, too, as long as the Janesville City Council likes a rezoning plan for a trucking cross-dock project it is set to review later this month.
Bob Whalen, who runs cheese and dry goods hauler ForZack Trucking and ForZack Logistics in Janesville, got good news Monday when the Janesville Plan Commission unanimously approved a conditional-use permit and gave a thumbs-up to a rezoning request off Kettering and Whitney streets for a trucking cross-dock.
The approval and the recommendation to the council to allow a zoning change for the project came readily Monday despite concerns over the specter of traffic congestion by a handful of residents who live in the Pheasant Run subdivision just north of the proposed trucking outpost.
Whalen, who operates his independent trucking outfit on the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ south side, said his company is growing and that he aims initially to build a small-scale cross-dock for storage and transfer of food goods ForZack trucks in and out at a vacant parcel at the south end of Fulton Street off Milton Avenue.
It would amount at first to about 30 trucks coming and going per week out of four entryways to the parcel, Whalen estimated.
But that would change later if Whalen pursues a second phase of expansion in which he plans to build a 100,000-square-foot cold storage terminal to store cheese and other food items.
Whalen said traffic in and out of the site would jump to about 60 or 80 trucks a week.
WhalenÃÛèÖÊÓƵ plan was met with concern by residents Gene Mueller and Dennis Riley, both residents of Pheasant Run who spoke during MondayÃÛèÖÊÓƵ commission meeting.
They said ever since the state Department of Transportation reconfigured the Highway 26-Interstate 90/39 interchange to a diverging diamond interchange, traffic has bottled up just north at Milton AvenueÃÛèÖÊÓƵ intersection with Kettering Street.
Kettering is the cross street WhalenÃÛèÖÊÓƵ truckers would use to get on and off of Highway 26, and both Pheasant Run residents said they worry that added truck traffic could further tie up a busy intersection that is already troubled.
Mueller said he thinks the lights are timed poorly now that the new interchange is completed. He said the lights seem timed more to favor the flow of thousands of vehicles worth of north-south traffic going through the crossover.
That has led to growing bottlenecks Mueller said he fears could get worse if a trucking outfit added traffic in and out of Kettering, which is the only inlet to reach the 2-acre site where Whalen wants to build.
Plan commission member Douglas Marklein noted that prior to the trucking proposal, the last prospect for the same parcel was a proposed hotel—a plan that ultimately fell apart. Marklein said a hotel project would bring far more traffic coming and going from Kettering than small-scale trucking.
The council must approve a zoning change of the parcel in question from business to light manufacturing. The zoning change would revert the property to how it was zoned for years before a change that was made to spur the failed hotel plan.
The zoning proposal will reach the city council March 28. Whalen sought to extend an olive branch to residents of Pheasant Run, saying he knows semitrailer trucks can be some of the least-revered vehicles on the roadway.
“I love being in this town and I’d like to stay here,†Whalen said, telling the neighbors “I will be mindful of your concerns,†Whalen said. “If I’m the owner of the company, and I can make the changes as needed, hopefully, I’ll have a permanent place to call home.â€
Plan Commission member Barry Badertscher voted with the rest of the commission to support rezoning the land and issuing a conditional-use permit, saying he couldn’t see putting a local land sale and local business expansion on ice when its use fits with surrounding industrial property.
Still, he acknowledged the troubles at the intersection, saying the city was complacent years ago when the state drew up and then later executed plans for the I-90/39 expansion and interchange rebuilds on the northeast side.
“It now takes me three stoplights to go through. It takes me 10 minutes to go through what used to take me 30 seconds. And thatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ not a unique situation. ThatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ what these (northeast side resident) people are dealing with every day,†Badertscher said. “ThereÃÛèÖÊÓƵ nothing we can do. Unfortunately, the concrete is laid. The design is done. I think we were asleep at the wheel.â€
A city analysis showed traffic would not be affected by the relatively low volume of trucks, but the development would require some intersections in the business park to be marked with signs intended to prevent truck traffic from turning onto them.
Duane Cherek, the cityÃÛèÖÊÓƵ planning director, said he learned the DOT aims to crosscheck the timing of lights at and near the diverging diamond interchange on Highway 26 later this year when crews wrap up a rebuild of Highway 14.
Death_list
Obituaries and death notices for March 8, 2022
Fredric Lee Barlow
Gary Benage
Carl E. Butcher
Jason Cain
Jasmine M. Crawford
Bernice “Meske†Hart
Anne J. (Taddeo) Jaske
Orville R. “ The Big O†Kind
Jon Anthony Summerbell
Gene Albert Wegner
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