Opportunities for new development along metro Milwaukee’s lakefront are rare, since most of the prime real estate near the lake was developed years ago and much of the land along the shoreline has been set aside for public parks.
However, thousands of truckloads of soil, dug up as part of the Mitchell Interchange project, will be brought in to cap a desolate, contaminated, 250-acre lakefront site in Oak Creek, which could become the next great development site in southeastern Wisconsin.
The Mitchell Interchange soil is “like manna from heaven,” said Gary Billington, vice president of sales and client relations for Milwaukee-based Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP. An Oak Creek resident, Billington leads up a citizens advisory committee for the redevelopment of the city’s lakefront.
Years ago, substantial manufacturing operations along the lakefront in Oak Creek provided a way of life for residents of the closely knit company town of Carrollville (see accompanying story). However, the factories along the Oak Creek lakefront closed years ago. Much of the land that they abandoned was contaminated.
Development in Oak Creek shifted to the freeway and the Howell Avenue, 13th Street and 27th Street corridors.
The abandoned factories of Carrollville had formed a barrier to most of Oak Creek’s lakefront. The barrier remains, even though the businesses and the jobs are gone.
“The lakefront is something that has almost been denied to Oak Creek,” said Doug Seymour, the city’s director of community development. “People haven’t been able to get to it.”
For years, city officials have recognized the untapped potential of the lakefront, but lacked the resources to tackle the difficult redevelopment project. In recent years, progress has been made slowly to remove contamination from some of the lakefront land and stabilize part of the lake bluff.
Now the lakefront redevelopment efforts are receiving a major booste. A half million cubic yards of clean fill that will be dug up by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to create tunnels for the Mitchell Interchange reconstruction project will be dumped on the Oak Creek lakefront to cap the contaminated Carrollville sites and prepare them for redevelopment.
That equals about 50,000 truckloads of dirt. The soil from the Mitchell Interchange project will provide a substantial cost savings to clean up the site, Seymour said.
The dirt will create a two-foot-deep cap that covers two key sites along the Oak Creek lakefront. Once approval is granted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, developers will be able to build on top of the cap without concern about underground contamination issues, as long as the cap is not disturbed.
Lakeview Village
Oak Creek officials are hopeful that, given a clean environmental slate, the lakefront will attract high-quality development.
The potential for Oak Creek’s lakefront, Billington says, is “almost unlimited. There are unlimited possibilities for recreation, commerce, research, public access.”
Oak Creek’s lakefront redevelopment efforts are focused on a 250-acre area between the lake, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) South Shore treatment plant, Fifth Avenue and Bender Park. The city calls the lakefront redevelopment area Lakeview Village.
The site includes seven parcels, each with a different owner, and a handful of buildings, nearly all of which are vacant.
Most of the property owners are planning to tear down the remaining buildings on the site, Seymour said. Most of the property owners and the DNR are cooperating with the city on the cleanup efforts, he said. As part of its deal with the city for the expansion of the Oak Creek power plant, Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp.’s real estate development division, Wispark LLC, has committed to invest $20 million in the city. As part of that commitment, the company has loaned $750,000 to the city to help pay for attorneys, environmental consultants and other experts to negotiate and arrange clean up plans with the lakefront property owners.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s there, who’s responsible and how to clean it up,” Seymour said. “All of the property owners have been very cooperative. We’ve got a pretty good understanding of the issues on these properties.”
The largest property covers about 80 acres on the north end of the 250-acre site. It is owned by the estate of Jim Jalovec. Jalovec, who most recently lived in Florida, died earlier this year in a helicopter crash in the Dominican Republic. He was flying to deliver aid to victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
The property owned by Jalovec’s estate is best known as the former Peter Cooper Corp. site. Jalovec bought the property in 1985. He used the property for his company, Oak Creek Storage and Handling, but his long-range vision for the property was a major lakefront redevelopment.
“Jim talked about this property a lot,” said Tim Costello, Jalovec’s brother-in-law and a shareholder for the Milwaukee-based law firm Krukowski & Costello S.C. Costello is overseeing Jalovec’s estate and the efforts to redevelop the property. “This was (Jalovec’s) dream to get something nice developed on the lakefront. We’re going to carry out his wishes and fulfill his vision to get something done there.”
The largest former Peter Cooper building on the site is being torn down. Another building on the site, used to weigh trucks, also will be demolished. Two other buildings will be maintained.
Joshua Neudorfer, a senior consultant for Milwaukee-based The Sigma Group, has worked for more than six years for Jalovec and his estate on environmental remediation, demolition and cleanup work at the former Peter Cooper site. The site has some contamination, but that was minimized because the glue manufacturing process used organic animal parts, he said.
The site will receive about 250,000 cubic yards of dirt from the Mitchell Interchange project, which will be kept in a pile until the property is developed, Neudorfer said.
Neudorfer has already interviewed some potential developers for the site.
“I would say we were getting significant interest,” he said.
‘The view’
Costello said he hopes to put the property on the market next year.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of interest,” he said.
The other major manufacturing facility that once operated on the Oak Creek lakefront was operated by Newport Chemical. The 57-acre site is now vacant, except for some large concrete slabs. It has not been used for manufacturing for several decades, but the property remains contaminated. The property is now owned by Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont. The other half of the dirt from the Mitchell Interchange project (250,000 cubic yards) will be spread at the DuPont site to create a two-foot cap over underground contamination and allow development to occur on the site, Seymour said.
The other parcels within the 250-acre Oak Creek lakefront redevelopment area include:
A vacant, 57-acre site south of the DuPont property, which is owned by El Paso Corp. DuPont and El Paso have spent millions for cleanup of the El Paso property, Seymour said, eliminating much of the contamination from that site.
Boston-based Cornell Ltd. owns a 22-acre property. The former Wabash Alloys LLC plant on the property closed in 2001, putting 85 people out of work. Several vacant buildings remain on that site.
The city owns a narrow, 11-acre property where its water intake pipe is located.
An eight-acre property between the former Peter Cooper and Wabash Alloys properties is the site of the former Hynite Corp. facility.
Milwaukee-based commercial real estate brokerage The Boerke Company owns 22 acres of vacant land at the southwest corner of the 250-acre lakefront redevelopment area.
City officials want to see the remaining buildings within the 250-acre area demolished.
Billington said he thinks executives with some of the property owners, particularly DuPont and El Paso, are eager to clean up their properties and turn them over to the city to get them off their books.
To accomplish its goals for the lakefront, the city will probably end up buying some of the land and selling it do developers, Seymour said.
“It’s probably in the city’s best interest to acquire some of the property,” he said.
Costello said, “When you stand on the bluff and look at the lake, and then look north and see the city of Milwaukee, there’s no other property like it around here. When I walk the property, I know why Jim bought it way back when: the view.”
