The city of Janesville continues to pave the way for a controversial apartment proposal in the heart of downtown’s retail and dining district.
Monday, the plan commission is slated to weigh a city plan to sell Bear Development a half-acre parking lot off North Parker Drive. Bear wants to build 78 units of mixed-income housing there.
This is despite scores of downtown business operators who wrote letters asking the city to halt plans until Bear hosts neighborhood meetings and gets public feedback.
The city released the letters alongside the commission agenda. Most of the letters say Bear’s plan is moving too fast with too little information available to the public.
The project surfaced publicly just three weeks ago, but it’s created a stir and a growing outcry among downtown property owners. The letter-writers say they worry the subsidized apartments Bear plans are the wrong fit for downtown’s retail economy.
Among the letters was one by Forward Janesville, which asks the city to halt any decisions until Bear holds neighborhood meetings to seek feedback on the project. Forward Janesville also recommends the city survey parking capacity downtown to look at the impact a large-scale apartment complex would have.
Other business operators say they’ve invested heavily in downtown properties based on earlier promises by the city that the investment would bring a more vibrant retail environment downtown. They worry the city is backing away from earlier commitments to public-private concepts like the decade-old ARISE riverfront revitalization strategy, in which private stakeholders have invested millions of dollars.
John Rocco owns Rock County Brewing—a microbrewery that operates out of the building right next to the city lot Bear is eyeing on North Parker Drive.
In a letter to the city, Rocco points out that earlier city plans for downtown revitalization sought to fuse downtown storefront and riverfront revitalization with development of market rate.
Rocco says he does not think Bear’s proposal for subsidized housing matches that goal — and he thinks the whole process is moving forward too fast.
“We are now facing the prospect of a project that was originally planned for Rockport Road—a more appropriate location in terms of accessibility and services—(but) is now being shoehorned into downtown due to what can only be seen as expediency, not strategy,” Rocco says.
Who knew?
After months of neighborhood meetings and talks, Bear walked away from a similar housing proposal along the Rock River at 101 Rockport Road, saying the land was not workable.
Bear and the city then quietly turned attention to North Parker Drive. So far, the city and Bear have not fostered the same level of public engagement as they had for the Rockport plan. Bear and the city had held multiple neighborhood meetings prior to the city ever considering conveying the Rockport Road land to Bear.
The plan commission must approve any sale of city land based on whether the sale fits city plans for the area. A recommendation would go to the council and would need to be OK’d before the project could move into further, more involved public planning and zoning discussions.
A memo for Monday’s plan commission says the city is poised to build a tax-increment financing incentive package for Bear’s downtown apartment plans.
The city is eager to designate the property as excess real estate for sale to Bear because the move would position Bear to for state tax credits and other possible funding sources that would give the downtown project a boost.
In a few interviews with local news media earlier this month, city officials have provided some details about what kind of housing Bear might build off North Parker Drive.
Bear’s earlier plans for the North Parker site showed apartments with rents ranging between $450 a month on the low end to $1,500 a month. Bear’s plans show the bulk of the properties would rent for $1,000 to $1,200 a month.
They would be subsidized based on maximum income levels, family size, and apartment unit size. That’s a plan almost identical to the earlier, Rockport proposal.
It’s not clear if Bear has shifted any in its plans, but the developer had asked the city to scrub an item from the May 5 plan commission meeting that would have put the North Parker property transfer on the docket. Bear officials said they wanted more time to go over the proposal before rolling it out for public debate.
‘Average housing’
City Manager Kevin Lahner has been pointed about his belief that affordable rental housing does not always fit a clean description based on low, modest, or higher incomes.
Lahner characterizes Bear’s project as something of a hybrid.
Lahner has said he’s worked with Bear in the past when he was city manager in Waukesha. He characterizes Bear as an adept and expert builder of apartments that are tailored to fit the overriding demographic dynamic of a community.
Bear has had great success in Milwaukee and its collar communities landing state and federal tax incentives for projects that are often marketed as subsidized affordable housing.
Often, Bear’s properties involve adaptive reuse of buildings, but the company has also secured major incentive packages to build new apartments like the kind they proposed on Rockport, and now, in the middle of downtown.
Lahner calls Bear’s price points and plans for the North Parker Drive proposal “apartments the average Janesvillean can afford.”
