The City Plan Commission met 09/27/2023. It was a brief meeting lasting only 14 minutes. About half of it was taken up with the public hearing, discussion, and vote on the request by Prospera Credit Union to rezone the parcels they owned at 4704 N Ballard Road to C2 Commercial. One member of the public spoke at the public hearing and expressed concern regarding how development of the land might impact the big, beautiful trees in the area as well as the area wetlands, but a representative of the project management firm did not think there was any plan to take down the trees.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the rezoning.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
The rezoning request consisted of two parcels. One was currently contained a single-family house and was zoned residential. The other had recently been annexed into the City of Appleton from the Town of Grand Chute and was zoned as Temporary Agricultural. If the zoning was approved, the house would be allowed to remain on the property and be considered a legal non-conforming use; however, Prospera planned to demolish the home anyway.
One member of the public spoke. Eileen bought a condo to the east of the lots three years ago. One of the reasons she had bought the condo was the big beautiful trees outside the living room windows. At the time she purchased her home, she was told that the land was owned by Northwestern Mutual Insurance and that it was going to be there forever. She was worried some of the trees would be taken away, and she could also see that some of them had been tagged as being in a wetland. She wanted to know what Prospera intended to do with the property.
Mark Boehlke of Hoffman Planning, Design, and Construction, the firm Prospera had been working with, said that a wetland delineation had been completed earlier this year and there was no plan on filling those wetlands at this point. He said that Prospera, whose building was located directly north of the lots in question, had simply secured the land because it was available. There was plenty of land for them to do whatever they would want; however, they had no timeframe for any work.
He also said that most of the trees were on the lot occupied by Northwest Mutual to the south of the land own by Prospera. [This is very clear in the overhead image included in the agenda packet.] There were some trees on Prospera’s land, but he didn’t think there was any intention of removing them.
Mayor Woodford clarified that they were only talking about rezoning the property, not about any kind of site plans. He offered to have staff connect with Eileen after the meeting.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the rezoning request.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1111432&GUID=3F234254-0A76-4690-B0A1-B812B509C7C6
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