RIVER FALLS – “This culminates in over a decade of diligent planning by city staff, especially the community development and the engineering staff who have worked hard to turn a big idea into a carefully laid plan,” said Mayor Dan Toland to kick off the Mann Valley Corporate Park groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday, Sept. 19. “When our shovels hit the dirt, their hard work will begin to turn into reality today.”

Before turning the mic over to City Administrator Scot Simpson, Toland thanked Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, Rep. Warren Petryk, and representatives from Chippewa Valley Technical College, UW-River Falls, the River Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and the River Falls EDC for their support and attendance at the ceremony.

Simpson said making the city’s largest corporate park a reality took years of planning and hard work.

“This project has been a number of years in the making and I think it’s difficult to really place a time and point where that may have occurred,” Simpson said. “Projects this complex, this large, that take as many years, there’s probably kernels and nuggets and discussions over coffee and all kinds of things going on in the community decades before you start to see, start to realize. We want to acknowledge all the vision and work that has been done, all the cleanup, build up, all of the risks that the community and our partner agencies have taken just to get us to the concept where we could even dream that something like this would happen.”

Simpson commended past and present River Falls city councils for their commitment to the project and for providing him the best job in Wisconsin.

Mann Valley Corporate Park, located on the northwest side of River Falls near the Radio Road/Powell Avenue intersection, offers 285 developable acres for manufacturing/light industrial. The ceremony kicked off the infrastructure construction for the project, expected to be completed in October 2024.

In June 2022, the city council approved a final design contract for SEH, Inc. On May 23, 2023, the city council approved a construction contract with Haas Sons, Inc. for the infrastructure construction, engineering services with SEH, the creation of Tax Increment District (TID) 19, and the purchase of 4 acres to building Discovery Drive.

“Though it’s careful and systematic, it’s built on a foundation of ambitions and the result is 285 developable acres,” Simpson said. “Mann Valley is not just our newest corporate park, but by far our largest.”

Simpson said he and Economic Development Manager Keri Schreiner often get requests from people who want something larger than 10 acres.

“We just haven’t been in the position to do that,” Simpson said. “The largest lot is 155 acres, not something very available in the entire Twin Cities metro area.

“With the new UW-River Falls Sci Tech building opening (in January 2026) and scores of talented UW-River Falls, CVTC and School District of River Falls students entering the workforce each year, the possibilities behind us are endless. It’s a pretty exciting moment in time. Just soak it up.”

Simpson said the project is both complex and simple. Complex because of having to line up real estate, environmental, engineering, marketing, supply chain, planning, legal, skilled labor and global economy challenges.

“The sheer number of people who touch a project like this just to get you to this stage today is massive,” Simpson said. “But the simplicity is of a local community determining its future, of determining what the shared goal is, and the simplicity of each of the people who touched that project doing their part to move it forward.”