In what is best described as an eye-opening ride through the bowels of the city last Friday, I captured over 20 commercial properties in Hudson with at least one vacancy. In the specific case of the industrial parks (many certainly financed with tax payer dollar encouragement) I found multiple buildings that have been empty for months and others for years. In all, we have a lot of empty space.
It is crucial to understand the problem here because many of these buildings were bought on leverage, using the equity appreciation in one building to finance the next. This only works so long as you are at or near 100% occupancy with cost per square foot based on your original business plan. Without tenets these properties become distressed and eventually fail leaving gutted out structures like we see in Detroit. Don't think for a minute it can't happen here; that would be just silly.
When you are done pondering how Hudson maintains the 3rd highest average home price in the state while listings double someone might want to wake up Bill Rubin at the St. Croix EDC and ask him what the default rates are on the magic tax payer loans he and his cronies have handed out over the past several years.
Finally, since Wisconsin ranked in the top 5 states for bank branch closings in the nation last quarter, and the top 10 overall, we're going with the suspicion that Chairman Walker (who's complete private employment experience is selling warranties for IBM) may have bitten off more than he can chew when he opened a bank using state money.
Welcome to the new normal.
