Green Bay Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy says the team opened its new Titletown District to diversify the team’s revenue, attract visitors, and make the city “a better place to live.”
Murphy said on “UpFront with Mike Gousha” that the Titletown District, 35 acres just west of Lambeau Field, will also help keep the Packers in Green Bay. The team spent eight years planning and acquiring property to make it happen.
“If we can strengthen the economic base of this community, that will help ensure over long run the team continues to stay in Green Bay, and not only stay in Green Bay, but remain competitive on and off the field,” he said on the show, done in partnership with WisPolitics.com.
Phase One of Titletown is already open. It features: the Lodge Kohler, a 144-room, 10-suite hotel; the Hinterland Brewing Company; and a Bellin Health sports medicine and orthopedics clinic. Phase Two, which is still under construction, will include a tubing hill, skating pond and trail, public playground and plaza.
Murphy said the Packers did research that shows Green Bay is at a disadvantage compared to cities of similar size nationally in the number of college graduates who live there.
Murphy said he hopes Titletown will help more college grads stay in the Green Bay area.
“We’ve got, obviously, St. Norbert College and UW-GB, and we’re losing a lot of the graduates to Minneapolis and Chicago,” Murphy said. “Also to attract more young professionals to this community.”
Also on the program, which was done on location at Lambeau Field, Joint Finance Committee Co-chair John Nygren said the $10 billion planned Foxconn development “is transformational for our state” and a “game changer” for Wisconsin.
Gov. Scott Walker last week announced the Taiwanese tech giant will build the manufacturing campus in southeastern Wisconsin and would get up to $3 billion in state incentives and employ some 13,000 workers.
Nygren, R-Marinette, also dismissed concerns that the Foxconn incentives amount to corporate welfare.
“In the shadows of Lambeau Field, you don’t score if you never throw the pass,” Nygren said. “It’s the world we live in.”
He also said Foxconn will only get money if they create jobs and meet their promises on capital investment.
And Nygren said he was hopeful lawmakers and the governor would reach agreement on the state budget soon.
The program also looked at efforts of NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Municipal Sewerage District, to fight a toxic cyanobacteria that helps create a “dead zone” in the bay every year.
See more from the show:
http://www.wisn.com/upfront
