Commercial · I-94 and I-90 Southeast to La Crosse
Parking lot sealcoating, crack filling, patching, catch basin repair, striping, concrete pads and aprons, concrete repair to walks, curb and approaches, and lot paving for commercial properties in Onalaska. About an hour and forty-five minutes southeast of Eau Claire on I-94 and I-90, and the estimate is free.
Onalaska is in La Crosse County, a city of about 19,900 between Lake Onalaska and the Highway 16 retail strip, right where I-90 and US 53 meet. It's about 79 miles from Eau Claire, an hour and forty-five minutes, off Exit 4 or Exit 5 on I-90. Ten and a half square miles at 700 feet, with Highway 35 and Highway 157 running through it as well.
The commercial center of gravity here is retail. Crosseroads Center on Highway 16 has about 68,700 square feet of leasable space with Michaels, Old Navy, Burlington and PetSmart in it, and a Sam's Club and a Target next door. Crossing Meadows, off the I-90 and US 53 interchange, is an open-air center of roughly 234,000 square feet with more than 15 stores, anchored by a Festival Foods. Highway 16 through there carries around 26,000 vehicles a day.
The employers named for Onalaska are Gundersen Health System, a Kwik Trip support center, Altra Federal Credit Union, L.B. White and Empire Screen Printing, which has been here since 1960. Kwik Trip bought the old UnitedHealthcare office building in 2023 to put its training department and part of its accounting staff in. City Hall is on Main Street, the Omni Center is the convention and arena building, and the school district has the high school on Hilltopper Place, a middle school and three elementary schools, with Luther High School and two parochial schools also in town.
Around Onalaska: Onalaska Omni Center, Lake Onalaska, Crossing Meadows, City Hall on Main Street, The Frank Eugene Nichols House.
19,898 people, 2024 Census estimate.
This is Driftless country. The ice never came through, so there's no glacial drift, the bedrock sits near the surface, loess covers much of it, and the ground drains so freely that natural lakes are almost absent.
Each of these has a page written about Onalaska specifically.
Retail is what gets sealed in Onalaska. Crosseroads Center and Crossing Meadows are big open lots with long drive aisles, and the sun and the traffic wear the aisles long before they touch the parking rows. Sealer is a wear layer over the binder, which is why a lot on a cycle stays an even color and a lot that's been left goes gray in stripes where the tires run. Square footage on a center that size gets measured, not estimated by eye.
On a retail lot the cracks that matter are in the drive aisles and at the entrances off Highway 16, because that's where traffic pumps water down into the base. Around 26,000 vehicles a day go by on that corridor and a good share of them turn in somewhere. Wide cracks get routed so there's a clean face for the rubber to bond to, and hot pour stays flexible through a winter where cold pour pulls loose. Filling before the freeze is what keeps the next spring's repair list short.
A grocery-anchored center takes semis at the back and cars at the front, and the failures show up on the delivery side first. A trailer swinging into a dock puts its load on the same patch of pavement over and over, and that's where the base gives out. Those areas get cut back square, the base rebuilt and hot mix rolled in flush. Out front the potholes are usually shallower, and they're still worth cutting out rather than filling.
The ground here is karst: bedrock near the surface, sinkholes and disappearing streams through the region, and drainage free enough that there are almost no natural lakes. None of that drains a parking lot, and a big flat retail lot puts all of its water into a handful of structures. When a frame drops, the asphalt breaks up in a ring around it and the low spot moves. Fixing it is the structure, a new collar, and the pitch put back.
On a retail lot the stall count is the property, so a layout is worth measuring rather than repeating. Fire lanes have to be marked and kept clear, ADA stalls and access aisles go in at the federal dimensions on the shortest accessible route to the doors, and the drive aisles have to let a delivery truck get around the building without cutting through the rows. A restripe over a sealed lot goes on after the sealer has cured.
Onalaska High School on Hilltopper Place has about 930 students and fields track and field in the spring along with boys' and girls' tennis, and Luther High School, St. Patrick and St. Paul's are also in the city. What the district has on campus, and what's under it, is worth a look before a number goes on it. Track and court work happens in the summer, and every district in the Mississippi Valley Conference is working with the same few weeks.
Retail concrete is curb, walk and pads. The curb line at a center takes plow blades all winter and delivery trucks cutting the corner all year, and a broken run of it is usually the first concrete anybody replaces. The entrance walks and curb ramps at the doors are ADA work, cross slope included, and they get rebuilt to the federal dimensions rather than matched to whatever was there. Dumpster pads and dock aprons behind the stores get sized for the truck.
Onalaska puts the cost of building, repairing and maintaining a public walk on the adjacent property owner, and the code writes out what goes in. A commercial walk here is at least five inches thick where a residential one is four, it runs five feet wide, it slopes a quarter inch per foot toward the curb, and the concrete through a driveway approach is six inches. The permit comes from the Inspection Department at least three days ahead, a repair of 60 square feet or less doesn't need one unless the inspector wants a new grade set, and the City Engineer approves the forms before anything is poured. If the Council orders a walk replaced, the owner has 60 days after the notice before the city does the work and puts it on the tax roll, and seven days when the condition is called life threatening. The commercial frontage is the Highway 16 retail and the centers off the I-90 and US 53 interchange, and rebuilding an entrance there means the curb head comes fully out and goes back in.
The commercial ground here is already built, so paving in Onalaska is usually an overlay or a tear-out rather than new ground. An overlay works when the base is still sound and the surface is worn or cracked through; it's the wrong call when the failures come from underneath, because the new mat cracks in the same places by the second winter. A tear-out is the answer when the base is the problem, and the base gets graded, compacted and drained before mix goes back down. Which one a lot needs comes out of what the failures look like and where the water goes.
What property owners and managers here ask, answered.
More about commercial workTell us about the property and we'll come measure it. You get a written price before anything starts.
(715) 450-9897Send the form and we'll call you back. The estimate is free.
