The Bonduel Redevelopment Authority is looking at ideas to revive its downtown buildings for more commerce, even though it still faces challenges from building owners to open their doors.
Samantha Cassius presented some ideas she developed as part of her master’s thesis at UW-Madison on some simple things the village could do to turn vacant buildings into viable businesses. In some places, it’s as simple as installing newer windows: For this, she showed designs for one East Green Bay Street building to the authority June 9.
Cassius also tweaked the appearance of another Bonduel building to turn it into a cafe, adding to it the village’s bear theme to make it more attractive. She also saw the potential for planters to beautify Cecil Street, although those would have to be planned carefully; the road is part of state Highway 117, and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation has jurisdiction.
“We want to keep what’s already there, but we also want to spruce it up,” Cassius said while explaining her ideas.
The idea is not to condemn blighted buildings, if at all possible, but fix them up so they look new again when potential entrepreneurs develop ideas.
“The goals for this project were to create a vision for the community to enhance existing buildings and under-utilized space, to suggest to the authority recommendations and to determine economic development opportunities,” she said.
Cassius also pitched the idea of turning the public parking area at the southwest corner of Cecil and Green Bay streets into a three- or four-story building that could be mixed use or even a hotel.
Bonduel is a blue-collar community, according to statistics that Cassius found as part of her thesis. Almost 90% of residents have a high-school diploma, but only 20% hold any kind of college degree. Median home values for the village currently hover around $173,900.
Kristen Fish-Peterson, a consultant with Redevelopment Resources who has been working with the village of Bonduel, said that visual ideas like the ones Cassius provided can help building owners who are unsure what to do with their properties. She said last fall that there were more than a dozen storefronts in the village that were vacant.
“Sometimes owners need an idea. They need a visual example of what could happen to their buildings to see the vision of what it could look like,” Fish-Peterson said.
She pointed out that the public parking area in Cassius’ presentation is currently not generating any tax revenue, so selling it and putting up a building could generate about $200,000 in tax revenue, in her estimation.
“That would be money that the village could spend in the (tax incremental finance) district,” Fish-Peterson said. “Right now, you have a parking lot that’s generating nothing, and if you put a development in there, it could generate a significant amount of income for downtown. Right now, you have three corners developed and one not developed.”
RDA member Brad Luepke said he liked the ideas, but the impediment would be getting building owners on board. He noted that innocent conversations and inquiries he’s made have sometimes turned hostile.
“I have no idea, because they don’t want to move,” Luepke said. “They don’t want to budge. To get some of the property owners to buy into that is where the struggle is.”
Luepke added that it’s not the speed of traffic that’s an issue for the village, but the fact that many downtown buildings are closed.
Municipal operations director Jesse Rankin expressed support for Cassius’ ideas and hoped there was a way to make them happen.
“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be converted into something nice,” Rankin said.
No action was taken on Cassius’ presentation.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
One idea pitched to the Bonduel Redevelopment Authority was to put a multistory commercial building where this public parking area is now to bring more attention and revenue to the downtown area. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
