Each of these has a page written about New Richmond specifically.
The lots here are the hospital campus on Hospital Road, the Walmart lot on West Richmond Way, the technical college on South Knowles Avenue, and the plant and park pavement on the south side. New Richmond sits in the Twin Cities' orbit, and a management company on the Minnesota side often works to a no-coal-tar spec, because Minnesota banned the sale and use of coal tar sealer statewide in 2014. Wisconsin has no statewide ban and neither the city nor St. Croix County has passed one, so over here it comes down to what the owner's spec says. We run an asphalt emulsion either way.
Crack Filling and Sealing
WisDOT doesn't call Wisconsin's roads frozen until the ground is down 18 inches, and that's the same ground a lot sits on. A crack that's open in November is a funnel into the base all winter, and it comes out of the spring wider than it went in. Wide ones get routed to a clean face first so the rubber has a wall to bond to, and it goes in at 400 degrees, thin enough to reach the bottom. The big flat surfaces in town, the retail on West Richmond Way, the hospital campus and the park pavement, crack in long straight runs, and the footage adds up fast on a lot that size.
Asphalt Repair and Patching
The airport is the unusual one here: 123 privately owned hangars and better than 275 based aircraft is a lot of pavement on one site. The plant on West 3rd Street and the truck side of the West Richmond Way retail are the other places a lot takes real weight in one spot. Where a hole has opened up the base under it went first, so the fix is a square cut back to sound asphalt with the base dug out and rebuilt, and hot mix rolled in flush with what's around it.
The lots with storm structures in them here are the flat ones: the hospital campus on Hospital Road, the retail on West Richmond Way, and the business park, which was built out with water, sewer, electric, gas and telecom already in the ground. What shows first is the asphalt failing in a ring around the grate, and by then the frame has been dropping for years and the collar under it has gone. A rebuild takes the structure back to sound, sets a new collar and keys the asphalt in at the right pitch. Patching the ring on its own puts the same repair back on next year's list.
Westfields Hospital and the technical college campus on South Knowles Avenue are the lots where the layout is the job: ADA stalls and access aisles at the federal dimensions, fire lanes, and a route from an accessible stall to the door that somebody can actually use. The Walmart lot on West Richmond Way has a walk-in clinic inside the building, which puts medical traffic in a retail lot. The high school on East Richmond Way and the three elementary schools are the other public lots in town. Everything gets measured and chalked before paint, and a restripe on a sealed lot waits for the sealer to cure.
Track and Athletic Surfaces
New Richmond High School is on East Richmond Way with about 1,100 students, and it runs varsity track and field and varsity tennis. The district has three elementary schools and a middle school besides, and its 2024 referendum covered additions, renovations and site improvements at Starr Elementary, Paperjack Elementary and the middle school. Track and court surfaces are summer work. Track work gets laid out to the measurements rather than by eye, because lanes and exchange zones have to come out where they're supposed to.
Dock aprons at the plant on West 3rd Street and in the business park, dumpster pads behind the West Richmond Way stores, curb and gutter around the hospital campus. A dumpster pad carries the front axle of a loaded refuse truck rather than the container, and that's what the slab gets sized for. Commercial pours go down at 4,500 PSI with tied rebar. Where a pad replaces asphalt that has been pushing and rutting, the asphalt around the new edge gets keyed back in.
Wisconsin's sidewalk statute runs in New Richmond the same as anywhere else in the state, so the city can order a walk that is unsafe, defective or insufficient replaced, serve the owner notice, and after 20 days do the work at the owner's expense and put it on the tax roll as a special charge. Ordinance 70-8 puts sidewalk snow and ice on the owner for the full width of the walk within 24 hours of the snow stopping, and the Street Superintendent clears what is left and assesses the cost. The city and WisDOT are rebuilding East 1st Street from South Knowles Avenue to Greaton Road, about 3,150 feet of urban corridor with new curb and gutter, storm sewer and sidewalk, with the design year in 2026. Public frontage in New Richmond runs along West Richmond Way at the Walmart and the business and technical park, up South Knowles Avenue past the Northwood Technical College campus, and out to Westfields Hospital on Hospital Road.
The business and technical park is about 107 acres off Highway 65 with the utilities already in, rail under two miles away and the airport three, which is the kind of site where the lot goes in at the same time as the building. New pavement goes down on a graded, compacted, drained base, because once the surface is on, the base is the part nobody can look at again. On an existing lot the question is whether that base is still sound, and that's what settles overlay against tear-out. The district's referendum work included site improvements across three schools, which is the other place new asphalt has been going in.
