Commercial · Highway 53 North to Spooner
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 Rice Lake. About an hour north of Eau Claire on Highway 53, and the estimate is free.
Rice Lake is the largest city in Barron County, about 9,000 people an hour north of Eau Claire on Highway 53. The retail runs along South Main Street, from Cedar Mall down through the chain restaurant pads, with downtown Main Street the older spine. The industry sits in three named parks and one very large plant.
The biggest lots in town belong to Rice Lake Weighing Systems, the scale manufacturer with its headquarters, main plant and metrology lab here and more than 600 people on the payroll, and to Marshfield Medical Center on West Stout Street, a full hospital campus with inpatient and outpatient buildings. College Drive carries two campuses side by side: Northwood Technical College and UW-Eau Claire Barron County, about 110 acres with six buildings.
The parks are where the newer commercial surface is. Rice Lake Business Park is 167 acres on the north side with highway access and the streets and utilities already in, CedarSide Business Park is 44 acres next to Northwood Tech, and the North Industrial Park at Lindy Street and Schwers Avenue is where Allram Lumber just broke ground. Menards is on Decker Drive.
Around Rice Lake: Cedar Mall, Marshfield Medical Center on West Stout Street, Northwood Technical College, UW-Eau Claire Barron County, City Hall on East Eau Claire Street.
8,971 people, 2024 Census estimate.
The state's geotechnical manual describes this corner of Wisconsin as silty glacial till with outwash sand and pockets of organic soil through it, so a lot can cross more than one kind of ground between its two ends.
Each of these has a page written about Rice Lake specifically.
The lots that need sealing here are the big ones: South Main Street retail from Cedar Mall down, the hospital campus on West Stout, the two campuses on College Drive, the plants in the business parks. A lot that size gets measured rather than estimated by eye, and the number is fixed before we start. There's no coal tar ban in Barron County, and we run an asphalt emulsion regardless.
The state's geotechnical manual describes the ground up here as silty glacial till with outwash sand and organic pockets through it, and ground like that moves with the frost. A crack on a lot that sits on it gets wider every winter until it's filled. Wide ones get routed first, and the rubber goes in at 400 degrees so it bonds to the walls instead of lifting out in the spring.
The lots that see trucks are the ones to watch: the business parks on the north side, Menards on Decker Drive, the loading sides of the plants. A pothole in a truck lane is a base problem before it's a surface problem, so the repair is cut back to sound asphalt and the base rebuilt and compacted, not a skim over the top.
The South Main Street retail lots and the parks on the north side are the ones with storm structures in them. A basin whose frame has dropped takes the asphalt around it down a little more every year, and the asphalt is what you notice, long after the structure underneath started moving. Rebuilt properly means the structure, a new collar and the asphalt keyed back in at the right pitch.
Cedar Mall, the South Main Street pads, the hospital and the two campuses are lots where the layout is the job: ADA stalls and access aisles to the federal dimensions, fire lanes, drive aisles a delivery truck can actually use. A restripe on a sealed lot goes on after the sealer cures.
Rice Lake High School runs track and field and girls' tennis, and the district has three elementary schools, a middle school and the high school. Track and court work anywhere is a summer-window job, and the window is the same one every other district is booking.
Dumpster pads behind the South Main Street restaurants, dock aprons in the business parks, curb and gutter around the hospital campus. A pad is poured for the front axle of a loaded refuse truck rather than for the container, and commercial pours go down at 4,500 PSI with tied rebar.
Rice Lake's Street Department keeps an annual list of the sidewalks it has found unsafe, defective or insufficient, and city code 218-2 splits the cost of a replacement between the city and the abutting owner under the special assessment policy. The same section calls for a permit from the Street Department at least three days before anybody lays, removes, replaces or repairs a public walk, and it applies to curb and gutter the same way. Repairing or reconstructing a driveway across a sidewalk or curb takes its own permit from the Street Superintendent, and the code says the apron can't reach past the face of the curb or into the gutter. Downtown Main Street came out of a half-mile reconstruction with the sidewalks widened and bump-outs built at the curb. On Phipps Avenue between Allen and Messenger, the 2026 utility work carries new curb, gutter, sidewalk and driveway approaches, assessed to the property owners along it.
Rice Lake Business Park has 167 acres with the streets and utilities already in, CedarSide has 44 next to Northwood Tech, and Allram Lumber is building in the North Industrial Park now. A new lot in a park goes down on a graded, compacted, drained base or not at all, because a lot laid over whatever was there is the one that fails early.
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.
