Recap Of Common Council Discussion And Vote Regarding Proposal To Relocated Trout Museum To Ellen Kort Peace Park

The Common Council met 10/05/2022 and ended up voting 8-7 to proceed with discussions on the Trout Museum of Art’s proposal to construct a new museum building within the Ellen Kort Peace Park.

On 10/06/2022 I recapped the presentation the Trout Museum representatives gave to the Common Council. Now I will be recapping the question-and-answers and discussion that followed that presentation.

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) started things out by expressing satisfaction with the presentation the Trout had given. The Council had needed to see if it was possible to honor the Ellen Kort Peace Park, the mission of the City of Appleton, and the mission of the Trout. Having seen the presentation, she wanted to proceed to the next step of the discussion.

Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) had a couple of questions for the Trout Museum representatives.

The first question was if the Trout did not receive approval to build within the park, would they leave Appleton, remodel their current building, or find another location within Appleton?

Christina Turner, the executive director of the Trout, responded that their goal would be one of those three things.

Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if they knew what their next step would be if the park proposal was not approved.

Ms. Turner did not know but said they had a variety of options. She noted that renovating their current building or tearing down and building a new building on their current site would require quite of a bit of work with the city and some things were perhaps impossible.

Alderperson Van Zeeland said that if the museum was to be built on public land, she would expect that citizens of Appleton would be able to access the museum without a fee. If a partnership between the city and Trout were approved, would the museum continue to charge citizens of Appleton and entry fee to the building or patio spaces?

Ms. Turner responded that she would love to see the museum be free, and if the museum ended up in Ellen Kort Peace Park, she would like to figure out a way to make that happen. They were not, however, at that stage right now, and there would need to need to be other steps to make that happen.

She said that starting this month, the Trout was going to experiment with offering two free days a month every month because they wanted to see how that impacted museum attendance. She thought it was important for the museum to be accessible. Personally, she agreed that if it was in the park, people would be looking for it to be free. She was in favor of that if they could make it work.

Mayor Woodford noted that Step 5 of the discussion process map included an action to develop the terms of an agreement between the Trout and the city.

Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) thanked the Trout for their presentation. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to love you more, but I think I do after your presentation, just realizing what great things you bring to the city of Appleton and what a cornerstone you are to programming in the community.”

He agreed with Alderperson Hartzheim that the presentation was what they wanted to see. He was somewhat concerned about taking an immediate vote on whether or not to move forward with discussions and wanted to share the preliminary design drawing with the city before voting. He was concerned that Step 4 of the discussion map involved a substantial investment on the city’s part. [As was discussed later in the meeting, the city’s costs would not be that much in step 4.]

He asked what the economic feasibility of the project was. Money didn’t currently go as far as it did 5 or 10 years ago and he wondered how the Trout would be able to build this museum within budgetary constraints.

Ms. Turner responded that they had a lead gift of $5 million from Dr. Monroe and Sandra Trout. She also said that she, Curt Detjen, and others were devoted to fundraising to meet the needs of building a museum in Ellen Kort Peace Park.

Alderperson Del Toro asked what their projections and estimates were for fundraising.

Curt Detjen said that Dr. and Mrs. Trout had committed $5 million and the museum had committed to raising a similar amount. If the Trout and the city moved forward, they would have a collaborative approach to the project. The city would see what the museum’s plan looked like, and “When the Trout Museum of Art commits to what shows up in that plan, we’ll commit to raising the monies that are necessary to do it.” At this point they were in the concept stage and it was too early to provide specific cost estimates, but the Trout, the fundraising committee, and everybody involved was committed to following through. He apologized that he couldn’t give a specific answer, but hoped it was enough to note that there was a solid commitment.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) agreed that the presentation was what they wanted to see but she felt they were in the same situation as when the proposal was first presented to them with no data. She was concerned about voting to move forward to the next step so quickly after the presentation.

Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) thanked the Trout for the presentation which she believed was well thought out. She lived very close to the park and the neighborhood there did not support moving the museum to the park.

A number of community members had brought up questions about the site in relation to DNR rules. She asked if the Trout had any information at this point about whether the site was even good to be built upon. She also said that the community was also concerned about how traffic would be impacted by the museum and asked if there was a remedy that had been thought of.

Mayor Woodford answered that at this point no work had been done on site analysis including environmental analysis or updating the traffic analysis. Part of the city’s commitment in creating the discussion map was that they would not work ahead of the step in the process map that was currently before the Council and the community.

If the Council voted to move forward to Step 4 then at that time the Trout and city staff would analyze environmental, storm water, traffic impact, sustainability, site plan, zoning, project funding, project schedule, space projections, etc. Step 4 was the step at which that level of analysis would be initiated.

Mayor Woodford also said that the city had been clear with the Trout Museum of Art that the costs related to environmental analysis would be born by the Trout and not by the City of Appleton. City staff would work to put those costs on the museum as opposed to bearing those costs as a municipality.

Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) was also concerned about voting that evening having just seen the presentation and preliminary design drawing for the first time.

But, aside from those concerns, he wanted to address some of the beliefs about the Trout Museum’s proposal that were held by both some community members and members of the Council. He was about as close to the development and design process of the Ellen Kort Peace Park as one could be. He was part of the park’s initial design phase, and he felt strongly about preserving the park. He was very pleased to see what the Trout was proposing and their intended footprint for the museum.

He thought that what was presented was essentially a larger version of what had originally been planned for the space. The city had originally planned 20 parking stalls and a couple of glass box studio spaces for education.

Now they had 40 parking stalls and a much larger glass box studio space for education. The space that the Trout would take up was essentially the space that the glass box, restroom facilities, parking space, and quilt garden took up.

He thought they had done an incredibly judicious job of listening to the community, reworking their original proposal where the museum might have been in the center of the park, and trying to work around to honor the park design by shifting the space over as far as they could and creating some screening for things that weren’t so sightly like the electric substation and railroad tracks. He also thought they showed some incredible environmental foresight and planning.

He went on to say, “There is a narrative that the park was designed to be entirely passive green space which isn’t quite true. The park was designed to limit programming and events that might occur in Jones Park, but many of the design discussions included elements to facilitate that active community engagement including that studio I talked about, as well that indoor outdoor [classroom?], central fire ring for small educational gathering spaces and then large open circular green spaces and lawns for much larger gatherings. It was meant to create spaces where the community could come together in certain ways and experience that park, not simply to ride through on a bicycle and enjoy the river front, which is part of the design of the park.”

Regarding the concerns about parking and traffic flow, he said the last traffic study had been conducted 20 years ago when the original building on the site came down and the city had evaluated how to develop the site. At that time, the traffic study had been based on the idea of the space being filled with a 22,500 square foot office space and 62 residential dwelling units. That would have been a much larger facility than the Trout, and he couldn’t imagine the Trout would generate more traffic than the office/residential building.

He also addressed the “narrative” that the Trout Museum was an elite thing and there were entities in the community trying to create this private space for their own goals. He felt it was painful to hear that tossed around. He understood the sentiment, but pointed out that the Dr. and Mrs. Trout had been huge philanthropists in Appleton and across the state, giving tens of millions of dollars to organizations doing important work in the Appleton community and beyond. He listed a number of organizations they had donated to including the Appleton Public Library, the Appleton VFW, the Core, Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, the Lutheran high school, Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra, the Trout, Wisconsin Public Radio, public television, and UW Madison. “So, I just want to make sure that people understand that the primary donors are kicking this thing off should be valued by this community, and their endeavor to start this with a five-million-dollar gift to move us into a high-end culture and arts community that people are gonna want to come to should be really valued and not downplayed.”

He was also in favor of not voting immediately and instead giving the community a little time to digest the proposal and cool off on some of their misperceptions about what was going to happen in the park.

Alderperson Hartzheim asked if many of the site analysis items that the Trout would do if they proceeded to Step 4 would need to be done by the city if the city continued with the original plans for the park.

Director of Parks Recreation and Facilities Dean Gazza said that with a park they would not have to excavate the property and would only be building up not building down as well. Because of that, they would not have all the environmental due diligence that they would if they were excavating. They wouldn’t have to worry about hitting remaining foundations or removing and transporting contaminated soil offsite.

Alderperson Hartzheim also wanted to confirm that most of those site analysis costs would be passed on to the Trout Museum which Mayor Woodford did again confirm.

Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if they had an estimate of the costs to the city if they moved to the site analysis phase, but Mayor Woodford said they did not have a hard cost estimate. [I feel like it would have been helpful to have that. I understand that it doesn’t seem like it will be that much, but the cost of this phase has been an ongoing concern which pre-dated this meeting so it would have been nice to be able to give some kind of estimate.]

Alderperson Maiyoua Thao (District 7) appreciated the presentation and all of the feedback from community members. She wondered if the passion evident in the meeting could be used to help people come together and raise funds to finish the park sooner than it otherwise would even if the Trout did not relocate to the park.

Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked what the total estimated cost was to finish the original Ellen Kort Peace Park design without the Trout Museum relocating there.

Director Gazza said the original study estimating the price was several years old. Including the cost of the trail through the park, and if they did not build the glass building intended for the park, the total cost would be something between $1 million – $1.5 million.

Alderperson Schultz cautioned Council members that they had just seen the proposed design within the last half hour. The comments from the public up until then had been based on assumptions about what would happen to the space and concern that the entire park would be lost to the building and would no longer be recognizable.

Alderperson Del Toro thought that the best decisions were founded on good data and removed from emotional reactions. “I just don’t think we have enough data yet to make a good decision as to whether to proceed with this park or not.” He was in favor of seeing what was determined by a site analysis.

Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) said, “I feel that no matter how beautiful and how amazing the presentation and the proposal is, unless it is what my constituents want, I can’t vote to continue with it. So, I really appreciate all of the energy that is going into putting this really wonderful focus on Ellen Kort Peace Park and its future, and I hope that whatever the future of these discussions continues to be it continues to draw us together with a greater and deeper appreciation of the assets that we have in our city. But at this point given the information available to me, and what I have heard from my constituents, if we are taking a vote on this tonight, I will be voting against continuing the discussion. Sometimes things can be very, very beautiful and still not be the right fit.”

Alderperson Chard Doran (District 15) was not for or against the project at this point but felt they did not have enough information yet. “What we see here now is a piece of what we’ve been looking for, but it’s by no means the only piece of information that we’re looking for.” He acknowledged that there was a lot of emotion and a lot of opposition to the project, but the Council often voted for projects that had opposition from the community such as street reconstructions that narrow the street against residents’ wishes. “Sometimes the right decision isn’t the popular decision.”

He wasn’t in favor of approving the overall project, but he did want to review the information that would be found in the next step of the process. He noted that it was possible that the site analysis might reveal that it was prohibitively expensive to build on that site as had happened with the WE Energies Trail recently.

He didn’t think they should vote against the project yet because they didn’t have all of the facts. “I’m just really encouraging my colleagues to keep in mind that that for us to properly do the job that we have is to vote with facts not just with emotion.”

Alderperson Wolff said his constituents had a lot of questions and some of the information provided by the next step of the process would help him answer those questions, so he was going to vote to move forward to Step 4. “I owe it to [my constituents] to get that feedback on this project. This is very similar to the original design, and I think that they’ll like it.”

Alderperson Fenton asked if procedurally they had the option to hold the item for a future meeting. After some discussion it was determined that they could vote to hold it until either a future special session of the Common Council or a future regular meeting of the Council. They could not, however, refer it to a committee.

Alderperson Fenton then made a motion to hold the item for two week and then take it up again in another special session of the Common Council.

Alderperson Alfheim opposed the hold and felt they already had the pulse of the community. Multiple meetings had been full with community members opposed to this plan. “The community is telling you their temperature. There is no new information to gather.” She did not think anything would change.

Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) was fine voting that evening but was also okay holding it for a couple weeks to give everyone a chance to see what the proposal looked like and how the museum in the park might work. He indicated that whenever the vote happened, he would vote to move to Step 4.

Alderperson Doran opposed holding the item and didn’t think that waiting for two weeks would result in valuable input on whether or not to move to the next step.

The motion to hold ended up failing 5-10 with Alderpersons William Siebers (District 1), Van Zeeland, Fenton, Thao, and Croatt casting the 5 votes in favor of the hold.

They moved back to discussing whether or not to approve moving forward to Step 4 of the discussion process.

Alderperson Schultz encouraged his colleagues to let it go one more step. Step 4 would help them determine if the project wasn’t feasible whether because of site conditions or for other reasons. He wanted to see what information came from the site analysis. Moving forward would also allow them to take the new temperature of the public now that they had seen a design that, from his perspective, essentially saved the Peace Park.

The Council proceeded to approve moving forward to the next step of the process by a very narrow 8-7 vote.

Those voting in favor were Alderpersons Del Toro, Van Zeeland, Joss Thyssen (District 8), Schultz, Wolff, Hartzheim, Croatt, and Doran.

Those voting against were Alderpersons Siebers, Meltzer, Brad Firkus (District 3), Fenton, Thao, Vaya Jones (District 10), and Alfheim.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1002546&GUID=8B346131-37FC-4AEB-8825-911160BF3F09