The Community Development Committee met 02/12/2025. One of the items they took up was a request to approve the creation and recordation of deed restrictions and covenants for plat 4 in Southpoint Commerce Park.
This item was approved unanimously by the committee.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Southpoint Commerce Park has 4 sections. The first three sections are already completed and have various developers who had constructed buildings on them. The fourth phase is located near Calumet Street, east of Eisenhower Dr and west of Coop Road. It has 12 lots that should be ready for site work this summer.
Before the city starts marketing those lots, they want wanted to update the covenants and deed restrictions for that section of the commerce park. The covenant was the same base covenant that was in place for plats 1-3. Some of the language was updated to try to make it more clear that it was not for heavy industrial work, and they added some allowable building materials and indicated who was responsible for enforcement of the park restrictions.
One substantive change was that they added language prohibiting the land in the commerce park from being sold, leased, sub-leased, or transferred to a third party that is tax exempt. This is an issue that the city had run into in the past. [Although it was not stated why this was a problem, one would assume the issue is that the city has paid for the installation of utility infrastructure within the Southpoint Commerce Park with the expectation that this will spur interest from developers and ultimately result in a return on investment in the form on increased property taxes. If a non-profit entity took over a lot, then the city would have paid for the initial utility infrastructure installation but would not receive the benefit of increased property taxes.]
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked to confirm that the restriction on non-profits only applied to plat 4 and could not be retroactively applied to plats 1-3. Community Development Director indicated that it might be possible to amend the covenants for any parcel in plats 1-3 that was currently still owned by the city; however, for lots that were already purchased, there was no recourse to update the deed restrictions.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the updated deed restrictions and covenants.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1256188&GUID=307B070B-A832-4C5E-8EDD-5194E86213C7
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