Dance studio plans move to Fredonia industrial park

A Saukville dance studio that “thrived” during the pandemic and doubled in size since is planning to move into Fredonia’s Southern Industrial Park.

On Monday, the Fredonia Plan Commission recommended a five-acre lot in the park be rezoned from manufacturing to business to allow for the proposed Nine Ladies Dancing studio.

The Village Board is set to vote on the rezoning Thursday.

The new Fredonia location would replace their current one at Conservancy Court in Saukville, owner Cari Allison said.

Allison said the growth of her studio, which started with just her and now has 10 employees, has been continuous.

“We added a second studio to the same building three years ago and our class size has doubled since,” she said.

Nine Ladies will open a third studio in the same complex this fall, Allison said, but space will still not be enough.

With four studios, the Fredonia building will be “much bigger,” she said, allowing her to reunite classes she had to split due to space constraints.

The building will be designed to allow for adding studios to its east side as needed, Allison said.

Construction is expected to be complete by summer 2025, she said.

During the pandemic, Nine Ladies didn’t suffer as much as other businesses, Allison said, attributing the success partially to her admittedly controversial lack of a mask requirement.

“The pandemic was terrible for a lot of businesses, but we thrived,” she said.

Nine Ladies has continued to grow since then largely from word of mouth, Allison said, adding she doesn’t do much marketing.

Allison said she has been looking for a new space for a while but kept hitting roadblocks.

“We’ve looked at so many buildings and they’ve all fallen through,” she said.

Finding the available Southern Industrial Park property was great, Allison said, because it allowed her to customize the building.

The most notable architectural features of the building will be “big, giant crosses on the inside and outside,” Allison said, adding they will reflect Nine Ladies faith and morals based education.

For example, Nine Ladies does devotions with students before classes, something that is not a part of most dance classes, Allison said.

The business is named after the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit listed in the Bible, she said.

The agreement between the village and the studio has yet to be finalized, village officials said.

To make space for the studio that is expected to add at least $800,000 in value to the Southern Industrial Park, a lot was split in two, Village Administrator Christophe Jenkins said.

The Southern Industrial Park is in a Tax Incremental District, which means all taxed revenue from the district’s businesses must only be spent on infrastructure or expenses related to the area for a fixed period.

In 2021, Fredonia took out $5 million in loans to develop the park that has three vacant parcels remaining.

The biggest of those, a 50-acre lot, is being saved for a high-value development to offset a predicted negative cash flow by 2028, village officials say.