Benjamin Timm of the Department of City Development speaks with WUWM's Maayan Silver about Century City.

Milwaukee officials announced Thursday that train manufacturer TALGO will be expanding at Century City. It was the second announcement in as many weeks for the north side business park.

Strauss Brands, a meat-packing company from Franklin, said earlier this month it would break ground on a plant which could bring 250 jobs to the area.

Benjamin Timm of Milwaukee's Department of City Development says Century City is a large piece of land in the middle of the city that offers a lot of possibility.

"The [business park includes] 150 acres historically," explains Timm. "Then in 2009, the redevelopment authority of the city of Milwaukee bought 84 acres. And that includes everything east of the railroad tracks."

He says the land is available for industrial, commercial, and even residential uses.

"It's a very high priority [for the city]," Timm says. "It has been. In fact, this is one of the only areas of the city that has dedicated project staff to it."

He says when Strauss moves in, the city will subdivide the site to create four new parcels — and then aggressively market those remaining parcels.

"With the momentum of Good City Brewing, and Strauss' announcement, and Talgo's announcement, we've gotten a lot of interest, we've gotten a number of calls for companies looking to locate here," he says.

Timm says it's one of the largest contiguous parcels in the city of Milwaukee, and there's still infrastructure from the site's previous large facilities like A.O. Smith. "All that infrastructure still exists here. So [companies] don't have to pay to bring in new water, new sewer, new telecommunication infrastructure. It's all right here, and that's one of the big selling points."

He says there's also a strong workforce in the neighborhoods surrounding Century City. The surrounding zip codes have high levels of unemployment.

Timm says they're looking for word of mouth to signal to the business community that Century City is the place to be.