The Common Council can vote Monday on a "pre-development agreement" with David Reinke, a step toward growth in the southeast side of the city that has been a long time coming.
Reinke and his partners at one time had offered a 100-acre shopping center proposal at the corner of County Highways PB and M in direct competition with the 62-acre West End development on the opposite end of the city. After battling for months for the right to build that project, they eventually agreed to diminish the retail portion to 40 acres and bring in industrial developers to promote the rest of Reinke's 240-acre land holdings in that area.
The pre-development agreement, still in draft form but expected to be finalized by next week, says the city will "make every effort" to make the entire property legally and physically developable but will only use tax-increment financing there to build roads and utilities.
If everything goes as intended, it would provide some competition in the marketplace for the Verona Technology Park to the south, which has been slower to develop than the city anticipated. It also would allow for the kind of larger parcels that have been recently been unavailable anywhere in Verona, something city administrator Shawn Murphy said the city has gotten lots of calls for lately.
The agreement includes a concept plan for the area that is not much different from what Reinke presented more than two years ago. It shows high-end "suburban industrial" development near Whalen Road and the U.S. 18-151 bypass and plainer, manufacturing/warehouse-style buildings further east, with a retail center at the corner of PB and M.
But with the West End stalled, the national economy slow and good industrial land in short supply, that concept - tweaked and with certain guarantees favorable to the city - has looked better and better to city leaders. The city began working on the agreement about a year ago.
Among the city's obligations would be annexing the property, applying to include it in the city's urban service area and rezoning it as appropriate, while Reinke's group agrees to develop it consistently with the concept plan and pay the five years of taxes that will be owed to the town after annexation.
"The intent is we're providing the developer a sense of ease, that they can come back for further action," Mayor Jon Hochkammer explained Monday.
Industrial developer Jeff Ruedebusch told the Plan Commission he thought the lower-end development to the east would be likely to be most in demand, before the retail portion sells.
