City struggling to find takers for Thomas Street parcels

When the city of Wausau finished its project to reconstruct Thomas Street, that left some parcels to be developed. 

But now the city is struggling to get contractors to bid on those lots. 

City staff say they’ve put out a number of requests for proposals for those lots, and keep coming up empty handed. 

City Community Development manager Tammy Stratz told the city’s Economic Development committee that the city has had interest from modular home builders but contractors need to be the ones to bid on the parcels and build the projects. The city has a grant through the Department of Natural Resources to build homes on those parcels. 

Modular homes would work best, Stratz says, because they can be more easily built to specifications neighbors said they would like to see on the site. The city held neighborhood meetings in that area to gather feedback to get a sense of what neighbors might like to see built there and compiled that into a list. 

Those meetings came after residents in those neighborhoods expressed concern about what was built on the remnant parcels left over from the first half of the Thomas Street reconstruction.