Though economic activity has been slow in Verona, much like it is everywhere else, the Plan Commission got a chance last week to think long and hard about the city's post-recession future.
It spent more than two hours July 3 discussing its most likely expansion areas over the next decade or so, land in the southwest, the southeast and the north. And while each of the three items had its own potential to be significant, put together, they offered a glimpse of what the city might look like in 10 years.
Considering the development restrictions imposed by the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission over the past year or so, the three projects represented about half of the acreage Verona has been allotted to grow into (with sewer service) over the next 20 years.
The city has been actively involved in working on two of them for at least two years - the "southwest" area, around state Highway 69 outside of the U.S. 18-151 bypass, and the Reinke property at county Highways PB and M. The southwest area goes before CARPC this summer, and the city plans to apply to add an 80-acre piece of Reinke's 240-acre holdings in Verona after it gets a resolution on the southwest area.
But a local developer brought a third item to consider - a 200-acre development just south of the University Ridge golf course, marketed toward the exploding Epic population and well-to-do empty-nesters.
"I'm very excited to be here; I've had this land for quite a while," Realtor Dennis Midthun told the commission, about two years after he and a former partner first pitched a project on that land.
At that time, the commission explained that its water-pumping capacity on the north side of the city wasn't ready for another large development and that it might be more appropriate in about five years. But recently the city has prepared to build a third water tower, and Midthun explained that he wants to get an early start on planning so that he can catch the market at just the right time - in about two or three years, when the local housing market has fully emerged from its slump.
"We'd like to really take our time to work with staff and their needs," he explained. "This is a long-term project. Nothing in Dane County gets developed quickly."
Midthun showed a keen understanding of the bind Verona is in with its limited expansion areas (the Common Council recently told another developer it wasn't ready to allow city development without sewer), and he reassured the commission that the political nature of CARPC approvals is exactly why he needs to start working immediately with the city.
In fact, his former partner in this development, Janice Faga, is all too familiar with that process, having been stumped recently trying to get land in Mazomanie accepted into the region's urban service area.
Complicating the issue is that Verona will not make any major urban service requests to CARPC until it gets a resolution on the southwest area. That has been a priority since about 2006, not long after a legal fight with the county and CARPC's nonpolitical predecessor resulted in the city agreeing to undertake a two-year, $100,000 environmental impact study.
With the study finished and recommendations for maintaining water quality made last summer, the Common Council voted Monday to include a 34-page "neighborhood plan" of 1,700 acres south of the bypass and east of the Sugar River in its application to CARPC. According to the plan, any land that will be developed east of the Badger Mill Creek would be residential and west of it would be commercial.
Dean Health Systems owns part of that commercial land and told the city in 2006 it eventually wants to put a medical clinic there, adjacent to the bypass. And the Scenic Ridge subdivision off Locust Street is designed to eventually link up with housing on its western border.
Whatever happens in that area, the next area in line for an urban service request is part of David Reinke's land in the southeast. The city voted Monday to annex 109 acres there and rezone part of it to prepare for what would eventually be a 240-acre commercial and industrial development, likely including a hotel, a tall, fancy office building, a big box-anchored shopping center and the Global Academy, with room for several large industrial businesses and/or office complexes.
Only after that area gets a resolution from CARPC on that request is the city likely to consider asking to bring in any of Midthun's 200-acre northside development - which actually is separated from the city by yet another potential development on the former Zingg and Backus properties. But the development the Verona native proposed got generally positive reactions from the Plan Commission.
"I think this project is way ahead of its time," commissioner Jeremy Charles said, referring to the potentially long wait it might have. "That being said, the general concept, I can buy into it."
Midthun noted that the project would be much more CARPC-friendly than some others, since it's between Verona and Madison, rather than on the fringes of the metro area. And he got the feedback he was looking for, to make adjustments to his still conceptual high-end development so that everyone would be happy.
"I have a vested interest in making sure this subdivision turns out to be something nice," he said. "It'll be the new gateway to Verona. It'll be my legacy."
