For years, a quiet four-acre parcel along Highway 69 north of New Glarus has sat largely unnoticed. There is no clinic on it, no office building, no parking lot — just open ground, Spring Valley Creek, and now a CBRE sign announcing that the property is for sale.

Green County land records identify the owner as The Monroe Clinic Inc. The parcel, 2302400183000, lies in the Town of New Glarus about two miles north of the village. CBRE is marketing it for $95,000 as commercially zoned vacant land.

That ownership alone raises an obvious question. Monroe Clinic once operated its New Glarus clinic at 507 Durst Road on the west side of the village before later developing the clinic at 1800 2nd St., near the intersection of Highway 69 and County Highway H. Was the land farther north ever part of a larger plan for where Monroe Clinic might go next?

At first glance, the parcel’s commercial zoning seemed to make that possibility even more intriguing. But records reviewed by New Glarus 360 show the zoning story is stranger than that — and appears to have started with a billboard rather than a clinic.