HOWARD, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – New life could be coming to the former United Healthcare building in Howard. The village board is set to vote Monday on a preliminary development plan for the building and its 50 acres of property.
Built in the early 1990’s the former United Healthcare building in Howard once housed more than a thousand employees. Back in 2020 as more of its employees starting working from home, the health insurance company decided to downsize, leaving the more than 300,000 square foot office building vacant.
Earlier this year, T. Wall Enterprises, a developer out of the Madison area, bought the site for $4.5million.
According to Jake Bunz with T. Wall Enterprises “Howard itself really attracted us, it’s a growing community.”
And T. Wall Enterprises wants to help it grow more. The developer proposing to gut the building and redeveloping it into about 250 apartments, along with retail space, and community areas.
“Multi-family building on floors two through six and then some commercial space and amenities on the first floor for the residents,” said Bunz. He added, “We talked about putting in a pool, hot tub, grilling stations outside, pickleball courts, maybe some sort of spa area, fitness room, yoga room.”
While the developers would ideally like to start renovating the existing structure by the end of next year, construction of new buildings would be on an as needed basis in what is expected to be a 10 to 20 year development plan.
“The large area of land gives us the opportunity to get creative with the master plan and get some density in there and create a community hub just like Howard Commons in but just down the street with our development,” said Bunz.
Additional development on the site would include more apartment buildings, townhouses, as well as some single family homes.
Bunz said, “We don’t want to build a ton of units right away and flood the Howard market because that causes problems with supply and demand.”
Businesses in the area welcome the development as they’ve seen growth in Howard in the past few years and understand what a project like T. Wall Enterprises is proposing could mean for the community.
“When we heard about that, it’s kind of exciting. Trying to see where it takes us, hopefully more business, more opportunities and we’re just excited about it. We’ve definitely noticed the growth. We do a lot better now than we did three years ago, so it’s just exciting to see where else it can take us,” added Julian Barajas, with Mexico Lindo.
The meeting, where the village board will take up the development proposal is scheduled for Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the village hall on Glendale Avenue.
