Manufacturing campuses like the one on the market today in Sturtevant, Wisconsin? They don’t come along often. It’s why this site should see plenty of demand.
The site in question? Cushman & Wakefield | Boerke has been selected to market for sale the former Cree Lighting manufacturing campus at 9201 Washington Ave. in Sturtevant, about 30 minutes from Milwaukee and an hour’s drive from Chicago.
Encompassing nearly 642,000 square feet across about 30 acres, the Racine County property ranks as one of the largest advanced manufacturing facilities currently available for purchase in the Upper Midwest region of the country.
According to research conducted by Cushman & Wakefield | Boerke, a limited number of comparable, modern manufacturing campuses are immediately available for owner-occupancy across the region.
Another positive? The campus combines manufacturing infrastructure with corporate office, engineering and research space, creating an opportunity for companies that hope to expand domestic operations without having to suffer through the lengthy timeline and capital required for new construction.
Jeff Hoffman, Principal with Cushman & Wakefield | Boerke, said that the greatest advantage that the site offers is the opportunity for its new owners to acquire immediate scale and become operational within months rather than years.
The campus also provides plenty of amenities, Hoffman said. It is nearly 90% air-conditioned and includes approximately 93,000 square feet of corporate office space, 8,600 amps of power, an 11,700-square-foot clean room, backup generation, specialized production infrastructure and a distribution component with clear heights reaching 35 feet.
“It is an exceptionally difficult combination of features to replicate,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said that the campus is also being offered well below replacement cost. A user pursuing a comparable greenfield facility would face a development process of at least two years, significant construction and infrastructure costs and considerable execution risk, he said.
That’s not the case with this site.
“This property offers a much faster and more cost-effective path to production,” Hoffman said.
Boerke is marketing this property at the right time. The U.S. manufacturing sector is experiencing positive momentum, a momentum driven by a push for reshoring, supply chain diversification, company investments in automation and continued domestic capital expenditures.
Hoffman said that the primary target for the site are large advanced-manufacturing owner-occupants, particularly companies involved in energy and electrical equipment, power-generation technologies, life sciences, medical products or other highly engineered manufacturing operations.
Hoffman said that Boerke is also targeting companies evaluating the greater Chicago market that prefer to own their real estate but are finding that most options available in their market are conventional big-box warehouses requiring expensive retrofits.
The site’s location offers benefits for owners, too. As Boerke says in a press release about the site, Wisconsin continues to benefit from its location in the center of the country, skilled workforce and strong manufacturing heritage.
“Southeast Wisconsin has become a major destination for technology and advanced-manufacturing investment,” Hoffman said.
A good example? Microsoft recently completed its first Mount Pleasant data center and is continuing construction of its next phases, while Eli Lilly is developing a planned $4 billion investment in its Kenosha County manufacturing operations.
“Those projects reflect the region’s increasingly strong infrastructure, workforce and business environment,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said that he expects strong demand for the campus.
“This is not simply a large industrial building,” he said. “It is a highly improved manufacturing campus that can substantially accelerate a company’s path to production while providing long-term access to one of the Upper Midwest’s strongest industrial corridors.”
Hoffman said that the industrial market in the region remains a strong one, despite some misleading vacancy statistics.
Vacancy statistics for Kenosha County, Racine County and the Milwaukee South industrial submarkets suggest a market working through elevated vacancy rates, Hoffman said. But Hoffman said that five specific buildings, totaling more than 3.5 million square feet and all delivered or vacated between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2024, account for much of the higher vacancy rate in the region.
As Hoffman says, every square foot of space in those five buildings is unleased today, distorting the overall vacancy status of the region.
“Once those buildings are removed from the calculation, the picture underneath is one of the tightest industrial markets in the region, tightening further every quarter for two-and-a-half consecutive years,” Hoffman said.
Located along the Interstate-94 corridor between Milwaukee and Chicago, the property provides direct access to one of the Midwest’s premier logistics and manufacturing corridors while offering immediate connectivity to both labor and transportation networks.
