Brookfield has a blue-collar community

Quick, name a major commercial center in Brookfield.

OK, that’s easy — take your pick of Brookfield Square or pretty much anywhere on Bluemound Road or Capitol Drive.

How about an office park?

Again, not too difficult. The city has nearly a dozen of them, and most of the buildings along Bluemound Road that aren’t retail stores or restaurants are stuffed with offices.

So, where are the manufacturers?

While Brookfield’s retailers and office buildings garner a lot of attention for their impact on the city’s bottom line, manufacturers — some of which predate Brookfield’s incorporation as a city — also play an integral part in the city’s economic health.

But manufacturers are facing challenges — including a dwindling supply of talented workers and limited space for further development — that are forcing them to make changes to survive.

Retail, office ‘more visible’

“Bluemound Road and retail and office parks seem to be more visible in the community, and our industrial parks are maybe less visible but still have a significant impact on the local economy,” said Pat Drinan, Brookfield’s economic development coordinator.

Manufacturing accounts for about 5 percent of the businesses in Brookfield, but employs 17 percent of the city’s workforce, Drinan said.

“I think it’s one of our hidden assets in Brookfield,” he said.

The city’s 2008 assessment valued Brookfield’s 41 industrial properties at $62.8 million. Owners of those properties paid a little more than $1 million in taxes in 2007, which accounts for about 1 percent of the total net taxes levied by the city, Elmbrook School District, Waukesha County and Waukesha County Technical College, Brookfield Finance Director Robert Scott said.

Scott said residential property taxes account for about 68 percent of that figure, with commercial properties — including office buildings and retail stores — making up the remaining 31 percent.

Where are the workers?

Thorsten Wienss leads visitors through one of Trace-A-Matic’s four manufacturing facilities in the industrial park just west of Barker Road, walking past picnic-table sized gears and other machine parts destined for use across the country and the world.

Trace-A-Matic, which has spent 34 of its 40 years in Brookfield, is a manufacturing success story. The 130-employee subcontract machining company works on products for customers in the mining, food-production, printing and aerospace industries and has “pretty much doubled our business” in the last five years, says Wienss, Trace-A-Matic’s president and operations manager.

But when asked about the biggest challenge Trace-A-Matic is facing, Wienss has a quick answer.

“People,” he says. “People. That’s it.”

Waukesha County had 3,300 fewer employees in the manufacturing industry in 2006 than it did six years earlier, according to statistics from the Milwaukee 7, an economic development group that is trying to attract businesses to the seven-county Milwaukee metropolitan area.

Wienss said Trace-A-Matic has a significant number of long-term employees, including two or three that have been with the company for 38 years. He said the company aggressively recruits potential employees and offers a hiring bonus to employees who recommend people who get hired and stay with the company for more than a year.

Still, Wienss is at a loss to explain why the manufacturing industry is struggling to attract new workers.

“Maybe parents don’t want their kids to go into manufacturing,” he says with a wry smile.

No space for new business

Harry Frey doesn’t have to worry about a lot of turnover at his company, ABC Box Co., which sits across the street from Trace-A-Matic. About 30 workers occupy the company’s 90,000 square-foot facility on Enterprise Avenue, and about two-thirds of those have been around long enough to accrue four weeks of vacation, Frey said.

But Frey, who started his business in Greendale in 1987 before moving to Brookfield five years later, has another concern about manufacturing, namely how the area will attract new manufacturers in the coming years.

Frey said manufacturing needs to be “brought back home” after many companies have moved factories overseas. He said more and larger manufacturers in Brookfield and southeastern Wisconsin would be a boon to the area’s economy, but admitted that it all comes down to a matter of space.

“How much room do they have left for manufacturing in this area? I don’t think there’s that much,” Frey said.

The land uses you see in the city now are for the most part going to be the same uses you see in the future, Drinan said. That means the areas of Brookfield dedicated to manufacturing now — the northwest and northeast corners of the city, along with pockets of areas like the one off Barker Road — will likely be the same in 10 or 20 years, he said.

The town of Brookfield recently took a look at its industrial future when some manufacturers — such as American Friction Welding, a sister company of Trace-A-Matic — expressed concern about a long-term redevelopment plan for a key commercial area that did not include the existing light industrial businesses located there.

Town officials modified the plan — which covers the area between Bluemound Road, Interstate 94, Barker Road and Janacek Court — to include light-industrial uses in the middle of the study area closer to I-94.

Companies face challenges

So what does the future look like for Brookfield’s manufacturers?

Since 2000, industrial development “has really tapered off” in Brookfield, even though some companies have made minor expansions, Drinan said. He said the slowed pace could likely be attributed to economic and market conditions, but there could be other factors, too.

Still, Drinan said the city will continue to embrace opportunities for industrial development and redevelopment in the future, including those companies specializing in emerging technologies.

Frey doesn’t care what kind of manufacturers come into the area, he just wants to see them here.

“We need more manufacturing people coming into our area, including Brookfield,” he said.

But some of the city’s established manufacturers are already feeling the pinch from the same challenges plaguing the city’s retailers and other business owners — rising health insurance and fuel costs and a sagging economy.

Higher-than-normal expenses over the last two to three years have made it difficult for ABC Box to maintain its business and provide cost-efficient packaging to its customers, Frey said.

If that keeps up, it could become a big problem, he said.

“How long can everybody survive? That’s the big $64,000 question,” Frey said.

Alan Hamari can be reached at (262) 446-6601.