Marshfield Common Council Hears Update on Development Agreement with Marshfield Towne Center

Friday, September 26th, 2025 -- 11:01 AM

During the Marshfield Common Council Meeting on Tuesday, the Council heard an update on the status of a development agreement executed in September 2022 for Marshfield Towne Center (formerly Marshfield Mall).

City Administrator Steve Barg provided some background on the agreement and the current status of the Marshfield Towne Center.

Listen to Mr. Barg's Update here!

(AI assisted transcription of the interview by Otter.ai):

Steve Barg: "So, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Marshfield Mall, that's what it used to be called, but now it's called the Marshfield Towne Center, and just kind of walk briefly through what happened. I'm going to start even earlier than the outline that I put in front of you tonight."

"But in 2019 Ned Brickman from Midland Management came to see me and he actually did a presentation to council in that year saying you would like to really reinvigorate the mall, get some ideas on how to get some bigger retailers in. And he had some that were kind of excited."

"Ultimately, he backed away for a variety of reasons. And then 2020 came, and we all know what that meant, right? That meant COVID. And for a couple of years, everything kind of went quiet in terms of trying to push brick and mortar operations, you know, in places like the mall."

"And I think we all know that even during this time frame, we could see malls across the state, and across the country, beginning to die off a little bit. So, it's been a tough time."

But Mr. Brickman, who I really give a lot of kudos to, he came back in 2022, met with staff, met again with council, and by September 29th of 2022 the Council, this body, some of you were here, ome of you weren't, signed a development agreement with Midland Management, with the Marshfield Mall."

"Malls For You is what they're called. And the plan was to try and get real, real invigoration, led by three new large tenants that they were going to get and then some other, you know, smaller tenants that they felt they could get to supplement."

"Here's the key components to what we signed on to back then, the developer was required to secure at least three nationally recognized retailers. The retailers in question had to sign leases for at least 10 years. So, it was not a here we are today, we're gone tomorrow type of thing."

"The commitment made by the developer was pretty, pretty big. He was committed to increasing the assessed value at that time from $6 million to a minimum of $14 million."

"Now, again, the assessment was going to be based on upon the value of the building. It was going to be based on the income approach, which means the commitment of the people signing on the leases and what they would pay, brings up the assessed value of the property significantly, which it did."

"The City provided his funding commitment through TIF district number 10, no upfront payment. This was wonderful for the City, because we don't like to borrow and put money out there from the beginning. It's what was called Pay As You Go, where we committed to $1.7 million to the developer over a period of years, a maximum of $1.7 million to be reimbursed as he provided tax increment."

"Here was the plan. You get $100,000 new tax increment. You know, in a given year, we will give you $85,000 of it back. We keep 15,000 for ourselves. It's an 85/25 split."

"What does the city get for it? We get the, obviously, the 15% of tax revenue we wouldn't gotten otherwise. And we get what we all wanted back then a rejuvenated Marshfield Mall."

"So, then go ahead, what happened in 2025 as we look at it now? Hobby Lobby, Ross Dress for Less, than Five Below all moved in. The assessed value as a 1125 hit $17,135,000, but more than $3 million more to the required minimum under the development agreement were created."

"An astounding amount of more than $11 million of new value were created from this development. Additional development is occurring and will continue to to occur around the mall area. They have future plans for more growth in some of the remaining spaces and the area's perimeter to the mall."

"So, if you look ahead to now, the developer has requested the first payment under the municipal revenue obligation. I met with the Finance Director and the City Attorney to get that thing signed and, as of November 1st, we will make that first payment."

"It'll be about $180,000. We'll make that payment annually based upon the assessed value at the time. But again, there's a $1.7 million cap on the money that we will ever pay to them."

"What did we get? We got a badly needed economic development boost. I think we all sat here, those of you who were part of the council back then, kind of bringing our hands watching the mall go downhill."

"So, we've got a big economic development boost, keeping people here in town more on weekends rather than going to Wausau and other places, and yet, we get an additional $32,000 a year in tax revenue for ourselves."

"I bring this up because questions are often raised about the use of tax increment financing. Little personal story. My dad was a council member in my hometown in Minnesota, and he used to tell me how awful Tax Increment Financing was. He actually was very skeptical of it. He thought it was kind of a shell game."

And I'm not saying some cities haven't used it that way. This was used very wisely, and it's benefited the City greatly. I want to thank Mr. Brickman, who was a great developer, to work with Mayor TeStrake, who was coming on board at that time, the members of the council, many of whom are still here tonight, that were here at that time.

"City staff, Jennifer Selenske was our Finance Director at the time, had come on board shortly before that, Dan Knoeck played a big role. He was our Public Works Director at the time."

City Attorney, Harold Wolfgram did a marvelous job in working through some of the intricacies of that development agreement to get us to the finish line. And I want to also thank Ehlers, our Financial Advisor, who weighed in a number of times, to make sure that the finance is all added up."

"So, again, I thank you for giving me time to do this. It sounds like we're just patting ourselves in the back, but I think this is worthy of celebrating and letting the public know that wise choices were made by this body, and it's greatly benefited the city of Marshfield.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.