Verona's happy with Epic in town

In October, the first contingent of Epic Systems staff members moved to their new headquarters on Verona's West Side. The move will continue over the next several months until almost all of the 2,000-plus staff will be located on the Verona campus.

The arrival of a company of this size has and will continue to impact the Verona community in a variety of ways, including some ways no one has even thought of yet. The good news about the impacts is that they are all positives for Verona.

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The most obvious and immediate im-pact is on the transportation system. To deal with the increase in vehicular traffic, the city has made several improvements to its roadways. These improvements will increase the carrying capacity of those roads and will route traffic so that the downtown will not be adversely affected.

Additionally, the construction of the new on/off ramp to West Verona Avenue will make U.S. 18-151 an attractive route for Epic staff members - again, directing unwanted commuter traffic away from the downtown.

With the support of Epic, Verona was also able to contract with Madison Metro to begin express bus service between the West Transfer Point and the Epic campus. Three buses are running at half-hour intervals in the morning and evening.

The improvements to the transportation infrastructure and the bus service between Verona and Madison benefit all Verona residents.

Adding more than 2,000 potential customers will have a huge impact on the existing businesses in Verona. Although Epic will have food service on their campus, if only 15 percent of the staff decides to go off campus for lunch, that means up to 300 more customers for area restaurants.

Other retail businesses can expect significant impacts on their traffic. Epic staff members will need groceries, laundry service and dry cleaning, maintenance on automobiles - all sorts of needs that Verona businesses are looking forward to filling.

Many have already expanded to serve the anticipated increase in traffic while others are in the process of doing so.

As one would also expect, several new businesses are looking to locate in Verona - again with the objective of serving the needs of these 2,000-plus customers. And, again, residents of and visitors to Verona will enjoy these new and expanded businesses.

One might expect - with the move of a large number of workers into an area -that housing would be another area impacted greatly. This is not the case with the Epic move. The move from Madison to Verona is not far, so it is not expected to have a meaningful short-term impact. For this same reason, the immediate impact on the Verona schools is expected to be minimal - and that is welcome news to everyone.

On a broader scale, because of the positive impacts of keeping a successful and growing company such as Epic in Dane County, the benefits accrue to residents and businesses all over the county.

As a region, we are all richer for having Epic as a business located in Verona.