While local and state officials hammer out a deal to make Stewart's Woods open to the public and keep it forested, the big question continues to be the price.
The City of Verona has considered buying the 54-acre parcel from the state for two years, but only since the Verona Area School District joined the discussion a few months ago has it been realistic. The state originally had the land appraised at more than $2 million, but the latest word is that the city and district could get control of the 33-acre woods for free and buy the remaining land for a half-million dollars.
Over the past few weeks, the district has been meeting in closed session to determine whether it can or should pay that much. Development nearby has pushed land values up in the 15 years since the state purchased the land southwest of the city from the Ziegler family, and some people are questioning how much the state ought to profit from the sale of land it essentially compelled local farmers to sell.
"The state created this conundrum," said Pete Erbach, who lives just north of the area and used to farm the non-wooded parcel. "It is trying to recoup all of its expenses for buying that farm. ... The state has made a lot of money off of that property (by) selling it off."
What the state is "trying" to do is debatable, as there are layers of bureaucracy and politics involved. But there's no doubt it would have made a hefty profit had it sold all 54 acres for as much as it originally asked, and bureaucrats at various levels admit that bringing money back to taxpayers is a motivation.
While the city, school district and even the town and various environmental groups in the area would hate to see the woods go on the open market and be developed or surrounded by industry, the state's asking price is hard to come by. So the question becomes: How much is it really worth?
The answer, appraisers say, depends a lot on the intended use and what uses might be permitted.
"It's very involved and complicated," city assessor Bob Courter said. "It's fraught with all sorts of issues where you can fall short because you're making a lot of subjective assumptions."
The history
The land in question was once a small part of the Ziegler family farm, originally settled by the Stewart family in the 1830s. When the state bought the farm in 1995, it was more than 460 acres but was scheduled to be bisected by the U.S. 18-151 bypass.
As a result, the family insisted on selling the whole farm, leaving the Department of Transportation with surplus property in all directions.
Several years after the road was built, the state began selling the excess land. The farm buildings ended up as part of Epic's land in the early part of this decade, and the state Department of Natural Resources bought almost 150 acres for $640,000 in 2006 for wetland mitigation.
In 2007, the DOA announced it would sell its remaining land inside the bypass. The land wasn't in the city limits, but legally, it was accessible by urban sewer and water service and therefore seen as valuable for development.
Many presumed the land would go to the highest bidder and be stripped bare for an industrial park or subdivision, maybe even a shopping center. And that stirred up locals who would like to see the forest stay intact - a rare luxury within an urban area.
"I'd like to see it preserved," said Dale Ziegler, who still lives in the Town of Verona. "It's an oak savanna with very minimal impact."
In fact, Ziegler said, his family once explored the possibility of padding their income by having loggers clear-cut the area, but they decided against it because of the aesthetic value of the woods.
"We were going to level it and make it farmland ... but we decided to preserve it for a park," he said.
With that goal in mind, the city applied for grants and received two: one from the DNR's stewardship funds for $168,400 and another, from Dane County, for up to 25 percent of the remaining purchase price. But that price was still too much for the Parks Commission and Common Council to justify, and the matter was all but dropped for months, until the school district entered the picture.
VASD was considering various options for land for its Global Academy at the time, and it was intrigued by the idea of a joint city/school forest. It already owns a 13-acre school forest. But access to a 33-acre "prime forestry area" would open up many new learning opportunities, superintendent Dean Gorrell said.
The district is still seeking more land for future growth, so even after it determined the Global Academy was unlikely to go there, officials figured that buying 20 acres could be justified - as long as the price was right.
What's reasonable?
So how much is the land worth?
If the land was all prime for development and connected to a road, an appraiser might have priced it at $100,000 or more per acre before the real estate market imploded last year. If it were only good for farming, it might go for $2,000 or so per acre, or what the farm originally sold for. And if it were considered completely inaccessible, it might not be worth a dime.
The reality is somewhere in between, complicated by access rights, special assessments and differences of opinion in the land's potential use. The value is also driven by what is projected to be done with it and to whom it might be sold, Courter said.
So on the open market it's got one value. But if it's left untouched or used for a public purpose, it's got another.
Additionally, the property is "landlocked" - with no access to any public roads. And it can't be granted full public access until several criteria are met, including the construction of a four-lane road that will cost more than $2 million.
Further complicating attempts to value the land, the 33 acres of forest are within a DNR-designated environmental corridor, thus limiting any development potential. Therefore, the only way to really evaluate the value of the entire parcel is to consider the wooded and non-wooded pieces separately.
Woods' worth
The DOA's original appraisal of the entire parcel was $1 per square foot, or $43,560 per acre. State facilities administrator David Helbach said typically two appraisals are done, and the state uses the average to calculate its value.
But it'd be hard to make a case for the woods being worth that much. It's not virgin forest - which would have its own protections - but it was brought into the urban service area as part of an "environmental corridor."
That designation can't be removed from most of the forest because it's on a high ground next to a wetland and therefore affects groundwater recharge. The Capital Area Regional Planning Commission - a countywide body that reports to the DNR - would have to decide whether it can be changed in a small piece on the southwest side.
"Because of the base flow of streams in that (overall) area ... as well as the hydrological impact, we are probably going to find that the woodlands in that (southwest) area are (also) providing a critical water resource function," CARPC deputy director Kamran Mesbah explained. "But we haven't done that analysis."
So at best, the wooded area has a mostly agricultural value, with only a small piece available for development, and only if the city chooses to modify the environmental corridor designation. At worst, none of it is developable.
"That strengthens the city's hand in negotiating with the DOT," Mesbah said. "The city's always in the driver's seat in these things. And they should be."
That likely was the reasoning behind the state's latest proposal, to give the city and school district exclusive access rights to the woods for free and sell the 20 acres of cropland at market value.
The farmland
But valuing the unforested portion is also complex.
Appraisers' go by a multitude of criteria, including gut instinct. But when land is sold for public use, it has a very different value from land sold on the open market.
Area developers the Verona Press contacted said they probably wouldn't touch land with such questionable access in this market, and one suggested that the kind of six-figure money that was being thrown around a couple of years ago on undeveloped land was obscene, anyway.
Still, in the long run it would be worth more than what the DNR paid for a chunk of land from the same farm outside the bypass two years ago.
Like the 20 developable acres inside the bypass, the DNR land is on the highway, is good for crops and has no access to public roads now but could in the future.
It is also part of the Sugar River Natural Resource Area, a wide swath of land that someday will be converted to marsh to improve water quality and habitat in the Sugar River. The appraisal in 2004 that set its value counted the 98 acres of cropland separate from another 49 acres of permanently undevelopable grassland. The cropland was appraised at $6,500 an acre, while the grassland was valued at nothing.
Middleton city assessor Paul Musser, who was hired to do the 2007 revaluations of both the city and town of Verona, said that clearly was not what it would be worth on the open market.
"That (98 acres) is worth a hell of a lot more than $6,500," he said.
City leaders, in fact, had hoped the DOA would instead sell the land outside the bypass for development and sell the forest to the DNR, because the access and development potential were greater on that side. But DNR real estate director Richard Steffes said the wooded area is "not of statewide significance" like some larger forests, mostly because a forest of that size has limited impact on natural habitat.
"It wasn't considered part of my charge to acquire that," he said.
The lower appraisal clearly factors in its proposed use - open space, essentially. And Helbach, the state facilities administrator (and state Building Commission secretary), said that should be the case in a sale to the city and/or school district, as well.
"If the city was buying it for development purposes it would be appraised at a development price," Helbach said. "The Legislature could tell us to give it to the city for free if they wanted to, but our responsibility is to get it sold."
While a VASD/city purchase of the 20 acres of cropland wouldn't necessarily be for open space, it's ostensibly for a public use - perhaps a school facility or basically a gateway to the woods. Part of it also would contain the road that would connect West Verona Avenue with Paoli Street.
In one negotiation earlier this winter, the DOA asked for right of first refusal in case the school district changed its mind and sold the property to a developer. But Helbach said if the land is planned for public use, that's what it should be appraised at, regardless of what happens years from now.
"We would take them at their word," he said.
So the development value might not matter. And in fact, the city and district apparently could come back with an offer, and even if it's lower than state administrators are asking, Helbach said it would be taken seriously and given due diligence.
"I would assume before we settled on a price we would do two more appraisals," he said.
