The Common Council met 08/03/2022. One of the items they took up was the request for staff and Trout Museum of Art representatives to hold discussions on the possibility of building a new Trout Museum facility within the grounds of Ellen Kort Peace Park.
This item generated a fair amount of public comment both for and against. The Council did end up voting to allow discussions to take place, but several council members stressed that they were only voting to approve discussion and their vote should not be construed as rubber stamping approval of the overall project.
Eleven people provided feedback during the public participation portion of the meeting. 8 spoke in support of approving the discussion [but, in should be noted that most of those people were involved with the project or were involved with organizations that had close ties to the Trout]. 3 people spoke against approving further discussion [and they seemed like just normal residents not part of a group or organization.] Cindy Kort, one of Ellen Kort’s daughters spoke in favor of approve further discussion.
Arguments in favor of moving forward were that this was an excellent opportunity to continue fostering the arts in Appleton, add to the economy, and revitalize the riverfront. The project was likened to the PAC project which was controversial but ended up being an important and beneficial part of the city. It was also noted that other art museums are located in parks or surrounded by greenspace including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park in New York and the Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass adjacent to Riverside Park in Neenah.
Those opposed raised concerns that the public had fought hard for this park, both for the land to be designated as a park and for the creation of the award-winning park design which was eventually approved; locating the Trout there would take away from the design and the work. It was also a small park with little space to give over to a corporate campus, and building there might negatively impact wildlife and the environment. There was also concern that by voting in favor of starting discussions, the Council would be setting itself up to experience political pressure to “follow through” on what they started.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) kicked off the discussion by saying that when she first learned about this item, both through its appearance on the parks and Recreation committee agenda and through an email that had been sent out from the Trout Museum to its members, her initial thought was that it was not a great idea. The park was small and she was concerned about the amount of space that would be taken up by the building, parking, loading dock, and other features. She also assumed the museum would want to situate the building along the riverfront, reducing public access to the river. The email feedback she had received had been 2 to 1 against going forward with the project.
However, she realized her negative reaction was based on a memo of fewer than 500 words, an email only slightly more than 600, and only about a week of scrutinizing the park’s master plan. She felt she would be making an error to vote no on holding discussions. She wasn’t convinced the project should happen, but she thought there ought to be a thorough examination of the proposal with full transparency throughout the process, so she would be voting yes.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) was confused about the process. He said that in the past when a city department or the mayor had an idea that wouldn’t cost the city any money, they would work out the ideas and present those to the Council. What was being voted on that evening, however, was whether or not the city should even gather those details. Although he thought the idea should be explored, he was uncomfortable voting yes because, based on what he saw at the Parks and Recreation Committee meeting and in the public comment that evening, the impression he had was that some people felt it was a great idea, it should be done, they just needed to add details to in before moving forward. “I’m not there, and I’m not going to sit here at our next meeting when we do vote on this, feeling like I made a commitment tonight.” He wanted to see details before he voted any kind of yes.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) intended to vote yes, but he shared some of Alderperson Siebers’ concerns. He had overheard some of the discussions that evening between people supportive of the Trout Museum which made him feel as if they assumed a yes vote on opening discussions was a yes vote on the project itself. Although some supporters had acknowledged the purpose was just to discuss the option, he felt uncomfortable that the Trout Museum and some of their partners assumed this was a done deal if the discussion was approved that evening.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) felt like this was a chicken and the egg. She had voted yes during the committee to get out of that circular situation. She thought discussion should be opened, but she did not want the city to spend excessive resources in conducting those discussions.
Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) said the park was located in the middle of her district. A week ago, she had received 12 emails, 10 of which were extremely negative toward the idea. At that point she thought she would be voting against it, but since then she had received a total of 31 contacts. 16 were hard no’s, 9 were in favor, and 6 were curious. Of the people who spoke that evening, 6 either lived in District 11 or has business in the district. 3 were in favor and 3 were opposed.
She thought I situations like that they tended to hear the most extreme voices first–those who were hard no’s or hard yeses. She thought the best response was to hear the rest of the voices. There was interest and there were concerns, so she was going to vote a “sensitive yes” to continue the discussion.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) said he echoed comments from all his fellow council members.
Some people had sat through a long process to develop the Ellen Kort Park which ended up becoming an award-winning park design. The community had been looking forward for more than a decade for that area to be turned into something.
He thought this felt a little like the Hadzi Sculpture. Appleton residents had waited 3 years for that only for it to turn out to not be what they were expecting. [Lol. I’m not sure comparing the Trout Museum to the Hadzi is a good argument in favor of the Trout’s plans.]
He thought Appleton went through growing phases sometimes, and right now it was in the middle of a growing phase like puberty. Sometimes it was painful and the city lost historic buildings and spaces, but in this case, they weren’t just talking about a vacant lot which was why it was so challenging.
He had been a part of the process that initiated the naming of the park and helped design some of the space. He understood the concerns of the people who had helped develop the award-winning park design, but he also understood the other side which was offering the potential to revitalize the river front which the city had been trying to do for almost a decade. He thought they needed to move the discussion forward.
He talked about his friendship with Ellen Kort and thought that she would want them to have this discussion.
He thought they had the potential to do something pretty incredible with the community and get through growing pains. It was going to cause stretch marks, but thry could get through it and it would get Appleton to a more adult stage of growth I out community. Appleton would be able to reach something aryistic that really captivates the creative class and brings people into the community.
Alderperson Vaya Jones (District 12) said that as a newer alderperson, this was the first issue that had generated a lot of feedback. She had received texts, calls, and Facebook messages as well as people coming up to her in restaurants and knocking on her door to talk about it. Residents had a lot of questions and concerns.
While she would love for a conversation to happen but only if it was truly a conversation without a next step happening. A concern that had been voiced to her was that the Council voting on continuing discussion had symbolic aspects and would give the impression the Council was saying “yes” to certain people.
When she looked at the residents who had come to her with their concerns, they were average neighbors living in Appleton. When she saw who came that evening [in support of the Trout Museum] they were people in powerful positions with a lot of money behind them.
Her fear was that this wasn’t going to just be a conversation but that there would be a tsunami of money and power behind the decision that was going to squelch what their neighbors were saying. She didn’t feel comfortable voting yes, although she was interested in talking about it if it was truly just about having a conversation. Her constituents had asked her to please vote no, so she would be voting no. [I thought she did a really good job of articulating a dynamic that I had also noticed while watching the public comment portion of the meeting. The people speaking in favor of opening discussion on this project all seemed well connected and reasonably influential within the city with access to money. The people opposed to the project all seemed like regular people who did not have the access and influence that those in favor of the project had. It was a little hard to see how those opposed to the project would not end up getting steamrolled by people and organizations that were better connected and funded than they were.]
Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) said he also would be voting no. He supported the arts, valued the Trout, and applauded the Trout’s efforts to firm a public/private collaboration. He thought that collaboration had a lot of potential; however, the overwhelming majority of his constituents who had contacted him has been opposed to moving forward on this.
He also was in favor of conserving a protecting the environment. The park was small, and hecwas opposed to new construction in a time of unprecedented construction costs. He asked them to think creatively and consider trying to use the Yrout to revitalize the College North Neighborhood or the City Center area.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) said when she first ran for office, something she had heard from a lot of people was that things were a done deal by the time they got to Council. She thought this item coming before them gave them the ability to open lines of communication and not close them. She thought everyone on the Council was strong enough to withstand pressure.
She thought that they did need to have a discussion in a public forum and that everything should be run past the public which was why she was going to vote in favor of the item that evening.
She said her vote was not a vote to move forward with a project and she had a lot of concerns, but she thought the discussion was worth having and needed to be had in a public forum.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) was voting no. A lot of constituents had voiced concerns. Green space was limited, and when it was taken away, it didn’t come back.
“I’d much rather see the Trout Museum collaborate with the city in a different area. So, I—based on the input from my constituents and my own evaluation of the situation–as much as I think that public forums and published discussion are absolutely the way we need to go in the city, I think that it would be false and misleading to green light a public discussion where the sentiment is not behind moving forward with the project.”
Alderperson Doran said Director Gazza’s memo talked about park development costs and the city being appropriately compensated for those costs. He wanted to know if the development costs mentioned were for the entire park or just the part where the museum might go.
Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza noted that the city didn’t have any money in its current capital improvement plan to move forward with developing the park.
If they were going to allow the museum to co-loxate in the park it would not make sense to construct a museum without completing the park, so both the museum and the park shoukd be 100% completed at the same time, allowing everyone’s vision to be accomplushed.
One of the recommendations within the memo was that, if the city allowed the museum to be built, funding for the completion of the park woukd have to be a discussion point.
Alderperson Doran pointed out that there was a cost to the amount of time staff invested in discussions about projects. That was a real cost to city taxpayers. He wondered if they had any sense of how much staff time would go into the conversation with the museum at this point, and would the city be seeking reimbursement for that time or would they be treating it like the staff time that goes into a regular development agreement.
Mayor Woodford responded that that was a good question, but the answer to that question, as with many of the questions about this item, had not been considered yet because what was before the Council was the question of whether to even engage in the discussion and put that staff time in. There would certainly be a cost in the form of staff time to evaluate the idea, but there was no plan at this point because even developing a plan required the commitment of resources. If there was not interest from the Council to even entertain the conversation, then he would rather not commit those initial resources.
He understood that this was a little different than past processes, but he had not felt it was appropriate to proceed with a discussion bout this without receiving input from the Council. He also noted that this was different from a normal development agreement because often with a normal development agreement the developer owned the land they wanted to build on. In this situation, the land was owned by the city and the city already had plans for that land.
Alderperson Doran appreciated that answer. He felt the Council couldn’t make a good, rational decision about this if they didn’t know the answers to their questions, so he was comfortable exploring this further although he was concerned about how much staff time might be spent on it.
Alderperson Alfheim thought that the point was to have an open discussion. She thought that the feedback that had come to her had been split 50/50 for an against and there were strong opinions on both sides. That told her they needed to have a discussion that involved more voiced. They also needed to help the Trout figure out what the city would require of them were this proposed project to move forward. “I don’t believe we should be saying ‘no’ without realizing that there could be a negotiation that allows us to really find some common ground that we all feel we are moving forward in something. I have a hard time saying ‘no’ before we’ve actually laid out the full communication of what it is we would need in our community to even think about it.”
She thought they needed the middle voices to show up and get involved in the conversation as well. [Honestly, I’m not sure that giving more time to this will result in more middle voices joining the conversation. I would think that giving more time would simply result in the Trout being able to utilize its mailing list to rally its members to lobby the city on behalf of this project, while those who are opposed to it don’t have a ready-made list of contacts and won’t be able to easily find the numbers that they would need to successfully oppose this. That wouldn’t necessarily mean that supporters outnumbered detractors but just that the detractors would be starting from behind because they aren’t an organization like the Trout is and they don’t have the resources of a ready-made contact list like the Trout does.]
She was glad the mayor had brought this to the Council because otherwise he would have just said “yes” or “no” to the project and the Council would have been left chasing it from behind. There might be some conflict ahead but it was the right choice to move forward together.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she would vote in favor of this. “I think I think it would be a dereliction of duty not to find out if we can work together somehow, and I am concerned about how that plays in other industries—if what they see us do tonight is say, ‘I don’t have the answers and I don’t want to look at anything that might be a new idea or A strange idea.’”
At this point, Alderperson Del Toro made a motion to remove references to Ellen Kort Peace Park and instead for the city and the Trout Museum to explore a partnership more generally.
This was discussed with alderpersons who opposed it pointing out that the Trout had specifically come to the city with a proposal about the Ellen Kort Peace Park and the city ought to respond specifically to that request. Those in favor of the amendment thought it demonstrated a willingness to work with the Trout and form some kind of partnership while signaling that they were interested in looking at more than just one controversial proposal.
The amendment failed by a 4-9 vote with only Alderpersons Siebers, Meltzer, Del Toro, and Wolff voting for it.
There was no further discussion on the original item and the Council went on to vote 9-3 to approve further discussion between city staff and the Trout Museum with Alderpersons Meltzer, Del Toro, and Jones voting no and Alderperson Siebers abstaining.
Mayor Woodford finished the discussion up by stating, “The administration does not take this as authorization to proceed all the way to a project plan. We recognize that there will be many steps in this process. It will be iterative, and we’ll be communicating with the Council as we did at this very early stage before we’ve even had any discussions—substantive discussions—with the Trout Museum. So, I just want to make that publicly known that this will be an iterative process, and that there will be public input as quickly as possible and then subsequent communication with the Council at every step of the process.”
[On the one hand, I can’t say that I really care what happens here. I don’t use the Trout and I’m probably not going to use this park much either. I understand the possible economic benefit of the proposed project and am curious to see what the actual proposal is and what kind of building the Trout envisions erecting, so from that standpoint I’m glad that further discussion has been approved. At the same time, this situation kind of comes off as wealthy, connected people swooping in at the last moment and coopting the many years of effort community members have put in to getting this space designated as a park and getting a site design created and approved.
On top of that, we’ve got the still fairly recent history of the city fighting the residents for many years over the Expo Center and the library, refusing to go to referendum over them, and doing everything in its power to ignore and wear down the many people who opposed those projects. So, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for residents to be worried that a similar story will play out in this situation as well.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=980228&GUID=793B96BD-AF7D-42ED-A4D6-06887E2086F8
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