Hey, say good morning to Denise Lockwood. Hi, Denise. How are you?
Hey, how are you? I am fine. Denise Lockwood founder and owner and she also
sweeps out the place tonight. I guess we're seeing County I. It always happens.
The first, the owner of this radio station once we were moving our transmitter, I have
a video of him sweeping out the transmitters. I said, you own the place. He said, well,
somebody has to sweep it out. So somebody does have to sweep it out. He took the bottle
washer. So you've got some big news. First of all, about the physical place of
Racine County. I just moved into new digs. Let's talk about those first. Well, we're
actually moving in. I've got the keys now and we're moving in. Well, we formerly all
in on October 1st. So we're moving into the Bell City Square complex, which is the old
or like melted milk factory. My building is 1926 Albert Street right to the building
right next to the inclusive being just to the right of it as you're looking at the at the
front of the building. And it's about 1900 square feet. And what we're doing is we've got
two spaces. One is going to be our newsroom. The other is going to be called the thought
collective. And we're going to start hosting a lot of events around thought leadership.
Oh, thoughts. I think they're in short supply. So one of the things that I was really thinking a lot
about how to help the community. And it was really about connection, not only to the highest
and best thinking, but around specific topics that affect us every single day. But also getting
people in the room together that may not may not always get get along. So we'll see if mom and
pod can get along. We'll see who knows. Oh, yeah, fully forget. I want to talk about your family
farm now. It's out. You're done. You're not in the farm business anymore, right? No, no, no,
mom and dad told the farm a year ago. Actually, just as past week, but yeah, they've
both been in the hospital. They moved to Florida. And I was there last week. But I'd have a
really great week of peace and calm before the storm of moving all my stuff. And I ended up
getting COVID. So there is that. But both my mom and dad, I told them before I left, I said,
go get tested. And they ended up testing negative. But they were both in the hospital,
my dad's still in the hospital, you know, and prays for your dad. But, you know, I found out
when moving the big COVID thing happened five years ago, you if you were afraid to get COVID,
because you said, Oh, yeah, COVID, I'm going to die if I get COVID. Now you get COVID. It's like
getting a bad cold for a couple of days. And that's about it. But it used to be you were frightened
to death of getting COVID. Then you get these tests. And when I had my test done at Walgreens,
well, it's like a 40% chance that it's wrong. Well, the more good it's, I want a 100% chance
that it's right or wrong. And they won't give you that because there's no guarantees on anything.
Talking about COVID and being well, you are sponsoring the wellness expo coming up on September
30th at the Fountain Hills banquet hall. It's called aging well, the aging well expo. And I'm
in that age group now, believe it or not. Me too, actually, I'm 55. So I'm getting to that point
where I need to pay a lot more attention to how I'm aging so that I can make sure that I'm a
consistent forward in my parents side. You know, you know, you're getting old when your sneeze
and your back goes out. Right. All these sneezes. Yeah. So aging well is an expo for people and it's
free, by the way. And really, it's meant to help people, you know, meet themselves where they are
and also improve, you know, what other things that they may have going on in their life from,
from making sure that you get your hearing tested so we can hear each other very well
to like ADARC, the aging disability and resource center is going to be there. They have some
fabulous support services and also just, you know, making sure that our aging does go well,
right? We also are going to have everything from like window companies to to leaf guard and things
along that line. So we want to make sure that we're aging not only well, but in the place that we
want to be, right? So we want to make sure our homes are free from hazards that cause us any
problems like falling and things along that. I have a super important, super important.
The, I knew I had my first, when I was a senior, I knew the first thing that came to my head
is when I was going to the movies and there was a parking spot, senior parking and I said,
well, I can't park there. I said, wait a second. I can park there and I pulled in and I,
because I don't have any gray hair. So I'm waiting for the person to give me a dirty look for parking
there. I was going to say 20 bucks as I can park here. And nobody took me up on it. But I was hoping
to make some quick money on that one. Here's one of our news partners, Racine County, I,
Denise Lockwood, owner, founder of Racine County, I, and what is it? What are some of the
stories we're keeping an eye on because there's always something changing around here. And you said
Microsoft is one of the top stories now. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So Microsoft, you know, how they
have the, the property out in Mount Pleasant. And they're actually, there's shifting the expansion
of that property. Now that they're looking at a second data center in Caledonia, it's a property
that is right across the street from the We Energy Plant on Highway 32. And what's really
interesting about this particular property is We Energy's owns the property. And the reason
why they owns that property is primarily because that all a lot of the people that used to live
around We Energy, they, their land was contaminated. They, they had a molybdenum in their water.
There was a lot of issues. And I covered that for, for quite some time. And now there's about
250 acres of property that used to be owned by residents, residents of Caledonia, now owned by
We Energy's. Now they are looking to sell that property on contingency of approval for the data
center. And the timeline is, is a very preliminary at this point. And I want to make that very clear.
There was an open house last night. There was also a public hearing on Tuesday night. And there's
a lot of pushback around this. So now, sounds like Aaron Brockovich, the way you described the land.
Just like that movie. So what is Microsoft? By the way, the Mount Pleasant land was owned by
the Chinese company. What's the name of that again? Box gun. And that was a big bust because
what happened? I mean, the president was out there with Governor Scott Walker. They were talking
about the eighth wonder of the world. And nothing happened. Well, okay. So there's qualifying
statement. And in one of the things that in journalism, we're very precise with our words. So
I wouldn't say nothing happened because something did happen. It just was definitely not the footprint
that was as presented. So there were three phases for the Foxconn property. And they did phase one,
which is where the globe was. And then they also had several contracts. They're contract
manufacturers. So they do contract manufacturing for like Apple and a lot of companies that
are GE is another one that they do a lot of work with. And they didn't build out to what they
had initially planned primarily because they weren't able to get suppliers in their supply chain
to come to the area. They also had issues with the market really tanked right as 2020 kind of
did what it did with COVID. And the market fell out. And so they had to really adjust,
but there have been problems even prior to that with Foxconn. So it's been an interesting ride on
that. So what is Microsoft going to do? I mean, Microsoft is already in wherever they are.
And they're doing a great job. What are they going to do in our area?
So these are data centers. So anytime you search the internet or you know, you're doing things
like with AI. And a lot of this is being fueled by the expansion of what's happened with AI.
And AI is artificial intelligence. And we're using it a lot more than I think we are aware of.
And so that's what's fueling this demand for having these data centers to handle that data load,
right? And so it's very much the same type of, actually, I wouldn't say it's the same type of,
but it's very much the same concept of like when we had telephones and you needed telephone lines.
And so you had to make sure you had that infrastructure. This is the same type of infrastructure
that's needed to handle the load that's happening. You know, the where I bank,
it stayed in Maine. My bank is there. And it was owned by Foxconn. They bought the building.
And there's whole first floor. The bank is on the first floor, but the rest of it was going to be a
special Foxconn demonstration center. And they cleaned out everything that got the tenant out.
They did everything. And it's just lays in rubble. Nothing was done with it.
After all these years, just lays there looking ugly.
That is that is something that I've heard quite a bit. That's actually another story line that
I'm going to be focused on over the next few months. There's a lot of development story that's
going to happen. Now, I think the thing that you need to really pay attention, especially if you're
living in that caledonia area, there's a couple of different pieces to this puzzle story-wise.
One is how are they going to use that property? What kind of environmental impact is it going to have?
You also have the impact on taxes. So one of the main issues we often hear about is our property
taxes are too high, right? This is approved and goes through, and it's very preliminary rate
that right now. It will shift that tax burden on to more industrial type of tax base from
right now in caledonia, about 2% of the taxes are paid for by industrial properties.
Now with this, if it would shift to 10%, now there's a lot of yin and yang to this project.
This is also a very big disruption of that use of that land because there's literally
farm fields and wetlands in that area. So, is Foxconn involved in anything or are they
completely done now in Wisconsin? You know, they still have the globe. They still have
operations that are literally on the property in Mount Pleasant.
So it's not like they have a completely abandoned ship, but there are very small,
much smaller footprint than initially what this was supposed to be.
Actually, that campus fully built out as proposed, if it would have gone through,
would have been the largest manufacturing campus in the United States, and that did not happen.
Yeah, what could it shoot at? What about, what's in that globe?
So, I'm, you're, you're, I don't remember what's in that globe. I think if engineering is in that
globe, if I'm remembering correctly, but don't quote me on that because I'm still that COVID
brain kind of happening. I heard it was filled with M&Ms. That's what I heard.
Maybe not. Maybe not. So they promised all these jobs, Foxconn, never came around.
How many jobs do you know of Microsoft is promising jobs?
So, okay, so here's what you need to know about data centers, and you bring up a really
interesting plan. This is one of the biggest complaints is that these are massive buildings,
but they're, they're really housing technology. They're, they're housing the servers,
and they don't require a lot of human beings to run. So the proposal for this third data center is
anywhere from 50 to 200 people to be employed by the, the property, but there's also a lot more
construction that you're going to have, and that will have a ripple effect as well.
It's definitely, I mean, they're also very large water users, and I know that one of the
storylines that we're going to be focused on is how much water do they use, and I know that they're
also working on water reclamation, and that's, that's going to be a really big deal because you have
one of the largest freshwater bodies, and I think it's the world with Lake Michigan. So that's a
very much protected resource that we need to be mindful of, but it's something that, that also
Microsoft is, is very much focused on working through as well, it seems.
I, you know, I find myself going to your website more and more now, whatever I hear sirens
or something. Check it out. Racine County i.com that's Racine, spell out the word county, right?
C-O-U-N-T-Y-E-Y-E. Racine County i.com, we're talking to the person who put it all together.
You got to really feel good about this. I mean, you put together a new service that people use.
That's, that's tough to do. And it is tough to do, especially in, in this current climate.
But, you know, we've been around for 12 years. We have 186,000 human beings that come to the
website every month, which ends up totally last year. We had 1.3 million human beings on
Racine County i. Last year. I like the way you qualify that. Human beings. Human beings.
Yes. We're not, we're not counting the dogs and the cows that go on watching this.
We're not counting the dogs and the cows, right? Because you're, you're from a farm, so we got to
discount all those animals. It's just human beings. Racine County i.com, Racine County i.com,
don't forget the aging well expo, it's coming up. And I've got all the information right here in
front of me. That's at the Founding Hills banquet hall on Durand Avenue. Founding hall.
Founding Hills. Founding Hills, yeah. Well, it's found in
Hall. And so Founding Hills is an apartment complex, so I just don't want to hear if it's for
a teenager. They typed it wrong. No, it's okay. All right. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Great friends. Ed's will roll.
Great. Great. Unfortunately, it's our, it's our president of our company, so I can't,
heads aren't going to roll. I guess. Okay, it's the aging well expo Tuesday, September 30th,
at the Fountain Hall banquet hall on Durand Avenue from 2 to 6 p.m. admission is free.
Vendors are going to help you stay active if you're a senior. Even if you're not a senior,
stop by because we all have a parents that are aging and someone's got to, you know,
watch out for them. And it's so good to have you next time you're in person here when we make
sure you feel better. I would love that. Yeah, you're in person here. We'll just give you
save your parking space outside. All right, sounds good. Keep well, prayers for your dad, good
luck for your parents and everybody should feel well in your family, okay? All right, thanks.
Thanks. Denise Lockwood, we're seeing County. I love it.
