Briggs Facility Purchased By Generac

JEFFERSON, WI --  September 6 — Briggs and Stratton’s former Jefferson manufacturing facility has been purchased by Waukesha-based generator manufacturer Generac and although Generac has not announced plans for utilizing the facility, Jefferson officials said today they hope it will be used for advanced manufacturing.

“I can confirm that Generac has purchased the property and we met with some of the folks from Generac yesterday,” Jefferson City Administrator Tim Freitag told the Daily Times this morning regarding a Wednesday afternoon meeting with Generac that also included Jefferson Mayor Dale Oppermann. “I can confirm Generac is the owner of the property at 900 N. Parkway in the city’s North Industrial Park, which was previously owned by Briggs and Stratton.”

Briggs and Stratton moved out of the facility about three years ago. Freitag said it was his impression that the deal between Briggs and Stratton and Generac for the sale closed last week. A sale price was not available.

The facility includes approximately 250,000 square feet of manufacturing, warehousing and office space. It sits on 18.9 acres. As part of the deal, Generac has also acquired an adjacent 6.2 acres of farmland that could be used for facility expansion.

“We wanted a company like Generac to acquire this property,” Freitag said, adding the potential for local employment through advanced manufacturing is very attractive to city leaders. “We talked in fairly good detail yesterday with Generac officials and they are still putting their plans together. They are unsure of what they will do at the Jefferson site. They are reviewing their options for the building.”

A call from the Daily Times to Generac officials was not returned this morning and Oppermann told the Daily Times he wanted to reserve any print comment on the matter until Generac had contacted the media.

According to its website, Generac was founded in 1959 and “has earned a reputation as the company that home and business owners turn to when the power goes out.”

It touts itself as the first to engineer affordable home standby generators, along with the first engine developed specifically for the rigors of generator use.

“We now sell more home standby generators than all of our competitors combined,” the company stated. “We revolutionized the commercial market with the first cost-effective product line meeting the needs of small and mid-sized businesses.”

Generac manufactures a wide range of power products, including portable, RV, residential, commercial and industrial generators.

“We, down here, are certainly hoping Generac plans to locate a manufacturing operation in this Jefferson facility, which was built in the 1990s and is well served by city utilities,” Freitag said. “It is a pretty modern structure and is one of the biggest manufacturing facilities in the city.”

Freitag said that during their meeting with Generac he and Oppermann made it clear the city will do everything it can to aid Generac in meeting with success in Jefferson.

“They told us they bought the property and that they were reviewing their options as how to best utilize it,” Freitag said. “The mayor and I articulated that we would like to see a manufacturing operation relocated back to that facility and that we would do whatever we could to help the company pursue its plans. They said it could be awhile before they could firm up their plans on how it will be utilized, but this isn’t a company that sits on its hands and it should have a decision made on usage in the near term.”

Freitag said city leaders are optimistic Jefferson will see a positive, overall economic outcome from the sale.

“We are pretty excited, because Generac is fairly successful and dynamic, and they have been in the media quite a bit recently about plans for their company’s expansion,” he said. “The mayor and I are pretty impressed. I think it’s a good deal for Jefferson because when the Briggs plant closed we lost manufacturing jobs and that came right along with the economic downturn. It has been hard to replace those jobs and our collective fear, along with the city’s common council, has been that a potential buyer would want to put a warehouse in there. Ware-houses provide fewer jobs and we want the opportunity to put manufacturing in there ... This could be advanced manufacturing. We think there is a chance for this to happen and that is our hope.”

 Steve Sharp         www.wdtimes.com