Less than six months after David Reinke blurted out a prepared statement to the Common Council desperately pleading for the right to build a large shopping center on his land, his attorney and a different development group were back in Verona presenting another proposal Monday night.
This time, however, the complex, inventive plan for the southeast edge of Verona got the full blessing of the city administrator and planning director and at least a lukewarm, curious response from the Plan Commission.
The proposal, put together by Madison-based Ruedebusch Development and Construction, all but ignores the 36-acre retail development at County Highways PB and M that Chicago outfit Clark Street Development had put so much time and effort into for Reinke over the previous year-and-a-half. It instead concentrates, as city leaders have repeatedly asked for, on developing an industrial park to the north and east of that property with a wide range of building types - from the large, warehouse-style behemoths to fancy, high-end, glassy structures one might see from the Beltline in Middleton.
And of course, it includes a 15-acre piece for the Global Academy, a multidistrict technical high school project led by the Verona Area School District with a hoped-for starting date of fall 2010.
"We have been having discussions going since the last time this was at Plan Commission," city administrator Shawn Murphy explained. "This represents a good acknowledgement on behalf of the developer of the city's desired goals."
It also represents a major compromise by the city, which would have to add 80 acres of now-precious urban service area and enable an undoubtedly complex reworking of the tax-incremental finance district there, TIF 6. It likely would take two years or more before a single shovel could be turned, and the real negotiations would only be just beginning.
"It is rather complex and multifaceted," Murphy admitted. But the benefit, he said, is "it would produce the type of jobs we're seeking in this TIF."
Commissioners had mixed reactions to both the TIF change and the urban service area expansion, neither of which comes without some significant sacrifice. And a few of them tried to carefully acknowledge the elephant in the room - the still present retail portion and its potential effect on plans for the West End, an approved development on the opposite side of the city.
Commissioner Jeff Horsfall said he agreed with the previously stated opinion of the commission that he'd prefer to see any retail on the southeast side of the city wait for other developments to get going, and he asked how this proposal would facilitate that sort of phase-in.
Murphy explained that there would be no specified time window but rather that the key would be in the developer's agreement, which would tie incentives and penalties to the growth of the industrial component.
"We would ... structure incentives to hold their feet to the fire," he said, explaining that the restructured TIF district would have to pay for road and infrastructure improvements there. "If there is not industrial development ... debt obligations would kick in."
After the meeting he clarified further, explaining that the agreement would have to tie the start of any development not only to the revision of the TIF district - probably a six-month process or more - but also the extension of urban services to the land currently in the Town of Verona - a process that probably would take well into 2010 or even early 2011.
In other words, if Reinke wants to take all that responsibility and put up the shopping center a couple of years from now, the city would at least be getting some much-desired industrial development for it - as well competition for the Livesey Co., which owns the Verona Technology Park just across County M.
"We think some healthy competition would help move things along," planning director Bruce Sylvester noted.
The entire concept was sufficiently complex to leave most commissioners with quizzical looks at any given point of the discussion. It even got Ald. Steve Ritt to break from tradition - he had previously avoided speaking at all because fellow Michael Best attorney Mike Green represents Reinke - by asking several questions and making a few comments.
Ritt later explained that while he still will not be voting on any related proposals, it seemed to him that each member of the commission had a valuable perspective on a different aspect of the proposal and its potential effects. And everyone was doing their best to "connect the dots" but couldn't seem to grasp it all alone.
