Invest in Tomah

Where the "I" divides and the people come together.

A city of 9,600 carrying the infrastructure of a city ten times larger. A railroad town first, then the point where Interstate 90 and Interstate 94 divide. Three industrial parks, a historic Main Street, and a documented housing gap, all inside eleven square miles.

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I-90 / I-94The interstates divide here

9,600Residents, 1,290 of them veterans

2.7%County unemployment

400 to 700Homes needed by 2030

3Industrial parks, all within 1/4 mile of an interchange

16.9 minAverage commute

Why here and not somewhere else

Every community with land to sell will tell you it has available acreage, a trained workforce, and a technical college nearby. Most of them are telling the truth. Here is what Tomah has that a competitor cannot copy.

The rail line from Portage to La Crosse was built through here in the late 1850s, and Tomah grew into a division point and a Milwaukee Road shop town decades before an interstate highway existed anywhere in the country. When I-90 and I-94 were laid down a century later, they divided at a place that was already a transportation town. That layering is why 9,600 people carry this:

The point where I-90 and I-94 divide
Class I freight rail, CPKC office in the city
Two Amtrak round trips daily each direction
Fly-in municipal airport
Three industrial parks in eleven square miles
Two hospitals, including the VA Medical Center
Western Technical College campus downtown
1,290-person veteran labor pool

Freight rail and the interstates move the goods. The passenger station and the airport move the people who decide: an engineer, a client, or an executive can come and go in a day without a car, which a city this size normally cannot offer. And the same mismatch explains the housing gap below. Tomah is short of housing because the economy outgrew the town.

Traffic counts and the full transportation network are mapped in the Comprehensive Plan transportation appendix (PDF).

Pick your opportunity

Housing400 to 700 homes needed by 2030 Downtown and Main StreetRetail, dining, services, upper-story housing Commercial and IndustrialParks at the interstate split

Housing

Somewhere on Interstate 90 this morning, a maintenance technician is driving forty miles from Onalaska to a plant in Tomah. She took the job. She could not find the house.

Demand documented: 400 to 700 units by 2030
Target: $200,000 to $299,999 for sale, about $1,000 rents
Missing middle is the underbuilt format
TIF and city partnership available
Modular and manufactured construction capacity on hand

That drive is the most useful thing a builder can know about this city, because the demand is already proven and already unmet. The employer exists. The wage exists. The worker said yes. What does not exist is the house. Only 25 percent of the people employed in Tomah live in the city, against more than 50 percent countywide.

Tomah has quantified its gap, named the price points and product types the market wants, and lined up public tools to help close it. Eight sites are inventoried, from about three acres of infill to 53 acres. Broader zoning flexibility for modular and manufactured construction is in drafting, with approval expected in early 2027. The full analysis is in the 2022 City of Tomah Housing Study (PDF).

44 acres, concept plan complete

Gopher Avenue area

B-2 Highway Business, Planned Mixed Use future land use, utilities in Gopher Avenue to the north. Privately owned. Contact the city for current status.

38 acres, 28 developable

Buan Street area

Planned Mixed Use future land use, utilities in Buan Street to the east. Privately owned, potentially available on a lease basis.

29.25 acres

Highway 12/16 and County C

R-3 Multi-Family and M-1 Limited Industrial, High Density Residential designation, up to about 24 units per acre under R-3. Privately owned.

Privately held parcels are described by land and zoning rather than owner or price, because a site can trade before you read this page. The city will confirm current status and connect you with the owner.

Site fact sheets for all eight inventoried housing sites are available from the Office of the Zoning Administrator.

Downtown and Main Street

A historic Main Street a few minutes from the interchanges, with a built-in customer base and a list, in residents' own words, of what it is missing.

Redevelopment study complete, 2025 to 2026
City-owned keystone site in marketing now
Façade grants awarded in 2026: up to $20,000
63 percent of residents downtown multiple days a week
TID 8 runs to 2042

A 2025 community survey of 1,165 residents found that 63 percent visit the downtown focus area multiple days a week. What they asked for is the opportunity: restaurants, entertainment such as a movie theater and bowling, daily amenities such as grocery and banking, outdoor dining and gathering space, recreation, and public art. A Kansas State University and Delta Institute study then named the market-supported uses: indoor recreation, dining and cafés, boutique lodging, specialty retail, and mixed-use housing with upper-story residential.

This is a small market with the demand documented and the public tools already in place. The city has bought and begun redeveloping a keystone site, the city funded a competitive façade grant program in 2026, and TID 8 runs to a mandatory termination date in 2042, so a project starting now has the full remaining life of the district behind it. Current grant program status is available from Building and Zoning.

City-owned, in marketing

1007, 1009, and 1013 Superior Avenue

Three-parcel keystone building. The city has drafted a request for proposals for upper-story residential, and the redevelopment study identified a range of market-supported uses for the block.

Privately owned, listed

1001 Superior Avenue

Bank building in good condition. Pairs with the city's assemblage next door for a larger site. Contact the city for current terms.

Privately owned, listed

210 Superior Avenue

Bowling alley, matching the survey's stated appetite for downtown entertainment.

Two markets, facing each other on Superior Avenue. Archipelago Market is a permanent private market project with a glass façade design and an active funding stack. Across from it, the Downtown Tomah Outdoor Market is an occasional and themed market run by the Greater Tomah Area Chamber of Commerce on city lots leased until they sell, designed to relocate as parcels develop so it activates ground without standing in a developer's way.

Stated honestly: aging building stock, infrastructure needs, small parcel sizes, and cost and financing gaps are all real constraints downtown. Design standards have been in place since 2017 and enforcement has been inconsistent, which the next phase addresses.

Downtown site fact sheets are available from the Office of the Zoning Administrator.

Commercial and Industrial

Three industrial parks, roughly 87 available acres, and every one of them less than a quarter mile from an I-90/I-94 interchange. Most industrial parks in the country cannot match that.

Roughly 87 available acres across three parks
All three under 1/4 mile from an interchange
Two electric utilities serve the three parks
Largest contiguous tract in the city is 22 acres
Anchors: Walmart, Toro, Cardinal Glass, Mars Petcare, USEMCO

The location advantage is permanent and already proven. National companies ship, build, and expand here, and the recruitment target includes the supply chains that serve them. If your largest customer is one of Tomah's anchors, the shortest supply line runs through a Tomah industrial park.

35 available acres, M-2

Forward Tomah Interstate Industrial Park

Owned by Forward Tomah, a private nonprofit formed more than 28 years ago to develop the city economically. Holds the city's largest contiguous tract at 22 acres. Terms are negotiated with Forward Tomah per project.

40 available acres, M-2

C. E. "Pete" Bean Industrial Park

City-owned and heavily incented. Largest contiguous tract 19.6 acres. Served by Alliant Energy; the other two parks are served by Oakdale Electric Cooperative.

12 available acres, M-2

Grain Avenue Industrial Park

City-owned and heavily incented. Typical lot 6 acres, largest contiguous tract 6.5 acres. Water and sewer mains in Grain Avenue.

Stated honestly: none of the three parks has rail access. Tomah's freight rail and CPKC presence are city-level assets, and a prospect that requires a siding belongs on the CPKC corridor, where the rail-served land is railroad-owned and the railroad has not disclosed availability.

Park specifications and fact sheets are available from the Office of the Zoning Administrator.

The details, when you want them

Incentives and financing

Program	Key terms	Best fit
Tax Increment Financing (City)	Primary local tool. Four active districts, TID 8, 9, 10, and 11, terminating between 2039 and 2042. Capacity is sized project by project against each district's adopted plan	All tracks
Residential Tax Incremental District (City, new state tool)	Created by 2025 Wisconsin Act 235, effective October 1, 2026. Allows a dedicated district for owner-occupied single-family and two-family homes on compact lots, with increment financing the infrastructure, under its own 3 percent value cap separate from the standard TID limit	Housing
TID 8 Façade Improvement Grant (City)	Up to 50 percent of project cost to a maximum of $20,000, awarded through a competitive 2026 cycle. Future cycles depend on annual funding decisions; confirm current status with the city	Downtown
Community Development Investment Grant (WEDC)	Generally up to $250,000 at a 75 percent match, downtown emphasis	Downtown
Vibrant Spaces Grant (WEDC)	Up to $50,000 at a 50 percent match, placemaking and downtown activation	Downtown
Business Development Tax Credits (WEDC)	Refundable credits for job creation, capital investment, and training, sized by WEDC per project	Industry, Housing
Idle Sites Redevelopment (WEDC)	Grants for redevelopment of idle or underused industrial and commercial sites, as available through WEDC	Industry, Downtown
Wisconsin Act 78 credits (WEDC)	Up to 15 percent of investment for employee workforce housing or an employee childcare program	Housing, Downtown
Certified In Wisconsin (WEDC)	State shovel-ready site certification for tracts of 20 contiguous acres or more	Industry
WHEDA loan programs	Infrastructure Access Loan for workforce and senior housing infrastructure, Restore Main Street Loan for upper-story housing above ground-floor commercial, and Vacancy-to-Vitality Loan for converting vacant commercial buildings to housing. Two application cycles per year	Housing, Downtown
LIHTC, Historic credits	Program-specific housing and rehabilitation finance	Housing, Downtown

No TID dollar figures are published. District filings go stale each July and the reported surplus is a projection over a district's remaining life, not spendable capacity. State program terms change; confirm current terms with WEDC and WHEDA. Bring a project and the city will size what the district can carry.

Workforce, stated plainly

Monroe County runs a tight labor market with an engaged, well-trained workforce, an above-average technical-training pipeline through Western Technical College and high school CTE participation, and a 1,290-person veteran labor pool inside the city, backed by the military-spouse talent that Fort McCoy and Volk Field draw to the area. Manufacturing is 19.2 percent of county employment.

The binding constraint is labor quantity, a condition shared across Wisconsin and the nation. The training pipeline, the veterans, and the quality of life are the recruitment answer, and the city states the constraint plainly rather than working around it. Housing is the other half of that answer, which is why it leads the plan.

Target industries

Advanced manufacturing, led by glass. Cardinal Glass is expanding at the technological frontier and Toro operates a factory and distribution center in the city.

Logistics and distribution. The I-90/I-94 split, the Walmart distribution center, freight rail, and a cluster of regional carriers. Transportation and material moving is the highest-employed occupation group in the region and is projected to add the most jobs through 2032.

Food and pet-food processing. Anchored by Mars Petcare, on the strength of the regional agricultural supply, especially corn, the interstate access that moves perishable and packaged goods, and a workforce already trained in process manufacturing. The recruitment target is the supply chain that feeds a plant like Mars.

Healthcare as an anchor sector. Not a recruitment target in the same sense, but the VA Medical Center and Tomah Health are major employers and a genuine quality-of-life asset.

Why Tomah, for the people you will ask to move here

Big-city access, small-town cost of living, and room for a family to breathe. Two hospitals including the VA Medical Center, and Tomah Health strong schools, a rebuilt Amtrak station downtown with two round trips a day in each direction, and a mean commute under seventeen minutes. Lake Tomah, the city trail system, parks, and an indoor ice arena that hosts the junior-hockey Wisconsin Woodsmen. Events that draw thousands, from Downtown Thursday Nights to the second-largest tractor pull in America. La Crosse is about forty-five minutes; Madison, Eau Claire, and the Twin Cities are all an easy drive.

Recent and active investment

Cardinal Glass is building what the city describes as a first-of-its-kind AI manufacturing expansion. USEMCO is expanding into a second location on Williams Street, the former plastics factory. The city has acquired and is redeveloping 1007, 1009, and 1013 Superior Avenue downtown, with a drafted upper-story residential RFP. Rice Development LLC is building modular duplexes on Monowau Street.

How to invest here, in plain steps

Tomah runs lean, and the honest promise is not a large staff. It is a single accountable point of contact who moves fast and tells the truth about a site. Every inquiry starts at the Office of the Zoning Administrator. You never have to figure out which office to call.

That structure is the advantage. In Tomah you get direct access to the people who make decisions, a streamlined review process instead of a big-city bureaucratic queue, and staff with working relationships across the county, the state agencies, and the elected officials whose support a project eventually needs. The city can walk a project from first call through approvals and connect it to the right state programs along the way.

Find a property

Search available sites and buildings across the state through WEDC's Locate in Wisconsin portal, or contact the city directly for the current status of any site on this page.

Search available sites

Talk to one person who can answer

Office of the Zoning Administrator, City of Tomah
608-374-7511
chandy@tomahwi.gov

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