Morse Group plans $5M expansion in Beloit

BELOIT — The Morse Group is building a $5 million expansion at its operations center at 1390 Gateway Blvd. to make room for its growing custom automation business.

The Morse Group was started in 1944 as Morse Electric Inc. It has since grown to include four companies under the Morse Group banner — Morse Electric, The Rockwell Group, TMG Systems and Automation Solutions of America.

The Morse Group’s headquarters are in Freeport, Illinois. It has offices in Madison, Elgin, Illinois and Troy, Michigan. Its two major operations centers, where workers build and service the products for all four companies, are in Las Vegas and its 97,000-square-foot operations center in Beloit.

Shawn Sullivan, company president, said it’s the growth in the Automation Solutions of America business driving the need for an additional 25,000-square feet at the Beloit location.

“The best way to explain the work we do at ASA is if you can’t buy a machine to do something, we can build it for you,” Sullivan said.

That includes control systems, assembly and test, control panels and lab equipment, among other things.

The company has an impressive list of projects in that division. It has built custom automation systems for ABC Supply, Beloit College’s Powerhouse and The Lincoln Academy in Beloit and the Mercyhealth Hospital and Trauma Center in Janesville. It also has designed and built custom automation systems for Eli Lilly’s Life Science Studio in San Diego, Pier 17, a New York City outdoor concert venue, and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, among others.

The Morse Group first moved its operations center to Beloit in 2004. Overall, the Morse Group employs about 900 at all of its businesses. About 120 work in Beloit on a daily basis, but the center supports the work of about 200 electricians as well.

So far, the Morse Group has only taken out a permit for the site work. Corporate Contractors Inc. of Beloit is the general contractor for the project. Once construction begins on the expansion, it will becone of the five biggest construction projects launched in the city of Beloit so far in 2024. The others on the list are:

* Northstar Medical Radioisotopes new clean rooms, estimated construction cost of $5.37 million.
* Woodside Terrace renovation and remodel, estimated construction cost of $4.96 million.
* New Starbucks at 2660 Prairie Ave., estimated construction cost of $1.2 million.
* Beloit College Whitney Hall remodel, estimated construction cost of $950,000.

The permit totals do not include all costs. The Whitney Hall project, for example, cost Beloit College about $2 million once complete. The Woodside Terrace project had an estimated total cost of $27.2 million.