Waukesha To Gain 500 Jobs; Local Real Estate Speculators Already Circling

WAUKESHA — INNIO's announcement that it will invest $300 million to expand its Waukesha engine plant, adding an 80,000-square-foot testing facility and creating more than 500 jobs over the coming years, was six hours old before local developer Rick Satterfield, 43, filed preliminary paperwork for three new apartment complexes he says will house the incoming workforce.

Satterfield, principal of Satterfield Development Group, submitted concept plans to the city's Department of Community Development for two 48-unit buildings on Sunset Drive and a third, larger complex near the Fox River he described in his cover letter as "positioned to capture overflow demand from the engine sector." No engine-sector workers have yet been hired, and INNIO's expansion timeline runs "over the coming years," according to the company's own announcement.

"You don't wait for the demand to show up before you build the housing," Satterfield said. "By the time the demand shows up, somebody else already built the housing, and then where are you? You're the guy without the housing." He said he arrived at the figure of three complexes by dividing 500 jobs by "roughly how many jobs it takes to fill an apartment complex," a number he declined to specify further.

A Familiar Pattern, Sort Of

INNIO's expansion, which will add engine assembly and testing capacity to the company's existing 1.7-million-square-foot campus, comes with up to $6 million in state income tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, contingent on the company hitting its hiring targets. WEDC spokesperson Carol Ostrander said the credits are performance-based and paid out only as jobs are actually created, a distinction she said "tends to get lost a little" once an announcement like this one starts circulating.

Downtown merchants, several of whom recalled a previous round of enthusiasm surrounding a proposed Piggly Wiggly expansion downtown that was floated and ultimately rejected by the city two years ago, were measured in their optimism. "We've heard '500 jobs' before, in different forms," said Denise Kowalczyk, who has owned a shoe store on Main Street for 19 years. "What I have not heard before is '500 jobs' followed immediately by somebody filing paperwork for apartments. That part is new."

"We haven't hired anyone yet. We haven't broken ground on the testing facility yet. I don't know what to tell you about the apartments."

— Roger George, CEO, INNIO Waukesha operations

Two More Complexes, Just In Case

Satterfield's filing lists the three complexes as "Phase 1," with a footnote indicating Phase 2 and Phase 3 concepts "exist internally" but have not been submitted, pending what he called "confirmation that the jobs are real jobs and not, like, robot jobs." City planning staff confirmed the Phase 1 filing is preliminary and does not constitute a permit application, and that no timeline has been set for review.

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who sits on the city's economic development committee, called the expansion "the kind of thing this city has been waiting for" and said he was not troubled by the speed of the apartment filing. "Somebody's going to build housing eventually," he said. "Might as well be somebody who's already thinking about it." He said he had not reviewed Satterfield's specific site plans and could not comment on the Fox River parcel.

The Testing Facility, Specifically

The new 80,000-square-foot testing facility, which will be used to run finished engines under load before shipment, is expected to be the first visible construction tied to the expansion, with site work anticipated to begin once permits are finalized. George said the company has not yet finalized headcount projections for individual roles, which will span assembly, machining, CNC operation, material handling, and maintenance, and pushed back on the idea that any of it was imminent enough to justify apartment construction. "Some of these hires are years out," he said. "I've seen the news coverage. I don't know where the housing math is coming from."

Satterfield said he remains confident in his projections and noted that his firm has already fielded "a couple of calls" from prospective tenants, though he acknowledged those calls came from people who currently work at INNIO's existing facility and are not part of the expansion. "Doesn't matter where the calls come from," he said. "A call's a call."