WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — After hearing from members of the community, a city-owned property will likely be rezoned.
Tuesday evening Wausau’s Plan Commission held a public hearing regarding rezoning the 1300 Cleveland Ave property from a Medium Industrial Zoning District to a Multi-Family Residential-12 Zoning District. The property has been owned by the City since the 1980s.
The rezoning of the property stems from an error in the City’s zoning code. In 2018 the current Wausau Common Council voted to rezone the property to a residential district. But when the City updated its full zoning code in 2019, the property was mistakenly rezoned as industrial.
At the public hearing for the rezoning of the property, resident Terry Killian summarized neighborhood and public opinion on the property.
“The opinion from residents in the neighborhood and community has been overwhelmingly in favor of fixing the City’s error and rezoning this property back to residential. Thank you for listening to the public and taking a step forward to correct the City’s mistake.”.
Most others who spoke a the public hearing agreed that the property should be rezoned back to a residential district. Some of those speakers included community leaders and former Alders like Dennis Smith, who suggested a potential use for the property.
“I don’t know what we have to do, cap it or something. Turn it into a green space, turn it into a bigger dog park. That little walk-in closet we’ve got for a dog park down there isn’t big enough for a city of 39,000 people. That would make a nice dog park and I think it would take not a lot of money to remediate it so we can use it as that.”
During the public hearing, the only opposition to rezoning the property came from representatives of 3M and Kolbe & Kolbe Millwork. Both companies currently have industrial properties near the Cleveland Avenue parcel and have expressed interest in acquiring the space for potential expansion.
In response to a comment made by the manufacturer representatives about their perceived lack of urgency to rezone the property, Killian argued the rezoning is urgent to the residents who live near the property.
“It’s to give the people who live in that neighborhood peace of mind knowing that there’s not going to be further expansion from 3M and Kolbe. It’s hard enough to live in that neighborhood and watch the plume of fumes that come out of that property every day knowing that there’s contamination in the area,”.
Following the public hearing, the Plan Commission had a 15-minute discussion about the proposed zoning change. Most members of the Commission who spoke on the topic were in favor of the rezoning, but some had concerns about the potential use of the zoning code to sway the type of environmental clean-up on the site.
City Director of Public Works Eric Lindman mentioned that because the City is in the very early stages of figuring out what to do with the property, it is likely that the property will be rezoned again when a land use is determined.
The Plan Commission voted to pass the proposed rezoning on 1300 Cleveland Ave. from industrial to residential on a 5-2 vote. The proposed rezoning of the property now goes onto the Common Council for final approval.
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