Pabst Farms - - Not Taxpayers - - Can Pay For New Mall Interchange

Planning in southeastern Wisconsin has been legendarily bungled for years - - but the revelation that the vaunted regional freeway expansion plan doesn't contain funding for an interchange for Pabst Farms' shopping mall is a doozy.

Planning in Western Waukesha County has long been the nearly-private preserve of a handful of powerful interests.

A Pabst Farms' initial consultant was Ruekert & Mielke, the same firm that has done water supply studies for both fast-growing Waukesha and New Berlin, and is also managing the regional planning commission's (SEWRPC) three-year-long water supply study.

Dan Warren, Pabst Farms project manager, is the chairman of the Waukesha Water Utility commission.

And SEWRPC wrote the freeway expansion plan, much of which has been driven (lousy pun) by housing and retail projects on farm land and open space in Waukesha County.

Where the Pabst Farms project, 1,500 homes on 1,500 acres, anchored by a hospital and upscale mall, is the biggest project of them all.

You have to ask: this was just a $20 million oopsie, an oversight? Is it conceivable that the Pabst Farms designers, mall owners, government agencies and highway officials didn't discuss how shoppers were going to get in and out of a million-square-foot retail attraction?

Or did all these honchos figure that taxpayers would write the check because folks out in Waukesha County would spare no expense to get a glitzy mall closer than Mayfair?

Regionalism is the rage right now, so maybe the business and government consortium known as M 7 will define Pabst Farms as a regional asset requiring regional investment - - sticking Milwaukee County residents with the biggest share.

That's how SEWRPC's annual budget is put together, and how its heavily-suburban water study got funded, so why not pay for a spanking new highway interchange for upscale suburban mall-goers the same way?

It was questionable, certainly, when communities in Waukesha County kicked in millions in public, Tax Incremental Financing dollars to help build the Pabst Farms complex right on top of the land that provides key filtration and recharge for the region's underground water supply.

But more public financing for Pabst Farms amenities would move from questionable to outrageous - - and probably to court - - should the powers-that-be deem a $20 million freeway interchange for a shopping mall to be a public need.

Fair solution:

If Pabst Farms managers want an interchange for their mall, they can pay for it.

(UPDATE: Read about the probable demise to the developer's bulldozers of the Ruby Farm, another Waukesha County landmark, here.)

The Pabst Farm Interchange Debate Continues

On Tuesday, I posted commentary on the fast-tracked deal to spend $25 million for the Pabst Farms shopping mall Interstate interchange.

I said it would use public funds to induce sprawl and drain business away from nearby small-town Main streets.

I also argued that it was a sweet deal for the mall's developers because they are paying just 7% of the interchange cost while taxpayers will pick up the remaining 93%.

Later in this post, you will see that Kurt Bauer, Executive Director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, holds personal opinions that support much of my land-use argumentation.

In an editorial today, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel disagrees, but also notes that along with better highways, the region needs improved transit, upgraded water treatment facilities and more sensitive planning overall.

Points well taken - - though sprawl and poor planning in Waukesha are more likely to accelerate in direct proportion to the amount of highway concrete that is poured, farmland that is converted, and new water supply that is piped there.

It's worth remembering that the Pabst Farms project - - really a self-contained small city with hundreds of homes, a hospital, a school, parking lots and multiple commercial ventures that will include a million-square foot mega-mall - - spreads acres of pavement right on top of once-agricultural land.

The very same land that still serves as the vital recharge area through which rain and snowfall are absorbed for the aquifer, which is the region's underground water supply.

The Pabst Farms project will spur more construction throughout the historic Kettle Moraine, encroaching on or near environmental corridor lands that the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) has recommended for decades in its Land Use Plan be left alone.

Kurt Bauer, SEWRPC executive director emeritus, has said often that the commission's original Land Use Plan, updated since, contains many good recommendations, including some that have been followed and some that have not.

(Bauer is the chairman of SEWRPC's controversial water supply study advisory committee - - controversial because it is headed, in my opinion, towards recommending sprawl-inducing diversions of Lake Michigan water into Waukesha County, so the spiral continues. Though retired as the agency's long-time executive director, he remains an agency consultant.)

At the advisory committee meeting of November 30, 2005, Bauer said that some local governments' failure to adopt SEWRPC's environmental corridor recommendations "in the Land Use Plan for 20 or 30 years" had been "a tragedy."

He recommended that environmentalists read the plan, and thinking he was aiming that comment at me (I was in the audience), I talked to Bauer after the meeting and he made sure I got a copy of the plan to peruse.

And as an aside, Bauer said to me, "Pabst Farms should never have been built."

That statement stuck with me.

Today I asked Bauer by telephone to amplify it, which he did, emphasizing that it was "a personal view."

Said Bauer: "Pabst Farms was at one time in a prime agricultural area. If the Regional Land Use Plan had been followed, it [Pabst Farms] would not have been given over for development...it should have been kept in agricultural, open use."

And as to agriculture in Waukesha County, which Bauer said was a worldwide cattle provider as late as the 1960's?

"Agriculture is pretty much gone there," he said.

Bauer said the key to containing sprawl is land use decision-making at the front end of the planning and development processes because "land use is the key to all these problems that we don't address" - - but he said that residential developers across the region continue to convert open land, with commercial and industrial land following.

"The containment of sprawl: [SEWRPC] has been preaching against it for forty years, but it's crying in the wilderness."

"Pabst Farms is a big change. You can see it," Bauer said.

"But alot of these changes occur in small increments. What do the Chinese say? 'It's the death by a thousand cuts.'"

My take on sprawl, both in smaller increments and the big, Pabst Farms' scale examples, in Waukesha County and across the region?

If regionalism and regional planning don't have preservation as their centerpiece, then we are squandering God-given gifts of water, forests and glacial hills, leaving behind a lament of failure through greed as our grandchildren's legacy.

Don't Build The Interchange To Nowhere

So the developer of the million-square-foot upscale mall at Pabst Farms is pulling out; maybe asking them to pay 7% of the cost of the $25 million Diamond Interchange so shoppers could get to the mall was asking too much?

Rumors about this were circulating earlier this week.

If those developers don't think the area can sustain the mall, why should the state, county and City of Oconomowoc press ahead with the fast-tracked construction of the Interchange?

When it comes to planning in Western Waukesha County, this could actually be a good thing - - a moment to slow down and do some serious planning where the tail does not wag the dog.

Even Kurt Bauer, executive director emeritus of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, has criticized the Pabst Farm project as an inappropriate use of agricultural land.

A little-publicized public comment period on the interchange plan ends October 29th: Details about how to send in comments are here.

The $25 million price tag for the interchange exceeds the amount of Tax Incremental Financing from local governments that went into the Pabst Farms project to begin with.

A recent discussion about how TIF should be used is available, here.

If the mall component conceived as part of the 1,500-acre housing and retail/commercial Pabst Farms complex is in such flux, government should step back and see if the private market is really committed to a mall construction, and on which site, and in what configurations.

And for the municipalities throughout the region to more carefully study Pabst Farms, and other developments and plans in the region, to see how they impact the region's land use, water, employment, housing, transportation and fiscal resources.

For example, Pabst Farms includes a hospital, a shopping center and other commercial buildings, along with hundreds of high-end single-family homes.

The mall would have added hundreds of additional relatively low-paying jobs to the entire project's commercial components, yet Pabst Farms has no transit service and no market-rate, apartment or multi-family housing for people who might work at Pabst Farms properties.

Is this planning?

Or is it emblematic of the reasons why the Waukesha County Board turned back the regional planning commission's latest long-range plan for the county as insufficient?

Until these questions are addressed in depth - - don't use public funds to build an interchange to nowhere.

Interchange On Hold. Maybe The Same For Defining "Upscale," or "Regional."

Until there is a firm deal for an upscale mall, no I-94 interchange will be built to its site at Pabst Farms, in Western Waukesha County.

This is the latest pledge from the powers that be - - the county, the state and Pabst Farms' owners - - in the wake of the first mall upscale mall developer's withdrawal from the project.

Here are the key paragraphs from the Journal Sentinel story linked above, which begs the question: just what is a "high-quality regional shopping mall." or do you merely know one when you see it?

"Funding for the interchange is contingent on development of a large, high-quality regional shopping mall.

"Retail industry insiders have speculated that Pabst Farms and local officials might have to scale back their vision for a grand shopping mall at Pabst Farms and settle for a cluster of so-called big-box stores - huge, free-standing buildings, each with its own massive parking lot, such as a Wal-Mart.

"But Mayor Maury Sullivan has said the city will not allow big-box stores to replace the mall. And Allison Bussler, chief of staff to Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, said a big-box development would not meet the county's criteria for release of its funds for the interchange project.

"'Certainly, there won't be county funds if that's the proposal," Bussler said."

But let's not get too giddy assuming that either grassroots' environmentalism and conservative spending had reasserted themselves to slow up the interchange 'schedule', since:

• The interchange proposal got sketched into the road design in record time for government action when the mall developer and county officials noticed that there was no I-94 access to the former farm's mall property- - a testament to bad planning in a so-called planned community, on land that the regional planning commission just down the road had recommended be retained as prime ag property, in a region of smaller towns with established business districts. Some had called all this planning.
• Nearly all the $25 million to pay for the interchange, more than 90% state-funded, was 'found' in existing budgets, then moved around administratively like Monopoly money. Some swore that was actually called budgeting.
• There is no transit connection to Pabst Farms, not even to the City of Waukesha. No one calls that balanced transportation - - but so far, except for 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, no one has suggested running transit, even rail lines, to and from Pabst Farms. Somehow that defeats the upscale definition of the entire project out there.
• Two new subdivisions at Pabst Farms are on hold due to the downturn in the housing market. With one upscale mall development abandoned, is a smaller mall, or a cluster of department stores or big-box stores surrounded with the requisite acres of parking how the site might get developed? We'll see what gets labeled acceptably as interchange-worthy - - $25 million bucks worth?

I suspect that the announcement about the perhaps delayed interchange - - and I say perhaps because we all know that the state transportation department is just itching to get that far western segment of I-94's future expansion jump-started - - is as much PR as it is economics.

After all, Waukesha County is tax-rebellion country: spending tax money to serve one special interest, upscale or not, might not be how the good folks over at Citizens for Responsible Government want their gas and property revenues used.

2008 is an election year for the locals: how tightly tied to "upscale" and "private" do they really want their campaigns to appear?

So don't be surprised if the next plan for that mall site gets labeled "upscale," or "regional," even if it's just a gussied up Wal-Mart or Home Depot, or a collection of undistinguished buildings that ain't much more than what we used to call a shopping center, or just "the mall."

Historical Site Damage At Pabst Farms Echos Earlier Destruction

Call this chapter IX in our continuing series, The Road To Sprawlville:

Rare Native American effigy mounds, some in the shape of panthers, have been damaged at Pabst Farms, the Journal Sentinel reports.

Turns out it's not the first time this has happened out Waukesha way. More on that in a few paragraphs.

In the march towards Progress that has moved the economy west on the Interstate Highway across the region - - and in the case of Pabst Farms, turned 1,500 acres of prime agricultural land into big homes, on large lots, surrounded by businesses and a hospital - - degradation of the land has been among the outcomes.

That these 800-1,400-year-old Native American mounds were there is a known fact.

Pabst Farm's website contains this information:

"Our vision is to carry on the Pabst family’s love of the land through protection of important natural resources including wetlands, woodland areas, and historically significant Indian mounds. And what we build to the Pabst Farms land must also be a tribute to the rich heritage handed down from generation to generation. "

The irony is that Pabst Farms is constantly referred to as a "planned community."

Except that the planners a) forgot to pencil in an interstate interchange so motorists could get to the fancy shopping mall still under consideration, and b) didn't get the word to employees in vehicles clearing brush that rare effigy mounds were on the site and had to be protected.

Those are exhibit a) and b), to date.

Maybe we should have a contest to name what c) and d) will be?

Planners and experts say the damage to the mounds can be fixed. Depends on what you mean by fixed.

Is a rare painting slashed by a vandal in a museum, or an icon or relic broken in one of our major religious shrines or temples, really restored after the damage is done?

For cultures that built and used these mounds for spiritual ceremonies, does adding fresh dirt in tire ruts repair the physical and psychic insult?

How long will it take someone to leave a comment on this posting essentially saying, 'who cares, those cultures are long gone, and roads and subdivisions are good for the regional economy?'

Repairing the damage done is moot argument, however, when it comes to other mounds in - - well, that were once in the area.

Officials and others were discussing the Native American mounds, and a pit in the Pabst Farm site, during the December 6, 2005 meeting of the Waukesha County Land Use, Planning and Environment Committee.

The minutes say:

"At one point there were close to 30 Indian mounds in this area. The I-94 construction wiped out the lion's share along with the [pit]."

Looks like the mound-builders were bad planners, too. Imagine putting these structures where an Interstate Highway, the road to Sprawlville, had to run.

Pabst Farms: The Road To Sprawlville Chapter XXXV

The Journal Sentinel does not distinguish itself with a thin piece about Pabst Farms for the Sunday paper.

Pabst Farms is the struggling planned community on farmland in Western Waukesha County that was supposed to be a centerpiece regional development.

And yes, the recession has something to do with suspended housing and a dead upscale mall there, but the article glosses over or omits any probing look at whether the entire project - - set so far from Milwaukee and the true heart of the regional economy - - had deep flaws from the get-go.

There's no one in the story raising basic questions about land use or transportation issues, and the Town Center business focus is propped up in the story with the good news that among the business open include a cell phone store and a sandwich shop.

C'mon.

That is not why Oconomowoc put in $24 million in public subsidies.

The newspaper has a solid investigative team still intact: Pabst Farms and the real costs of sprawl development in Waukesha County and elsewhere in the region - - subdivisions and gated communities galore, but virtually no affordable housing outside of Milwaukee - - would be a great use of investigative journalistic talent than feature writing about a giant planned community barely above water.

Final point: the story says Pabst Farms is now the second-largest property taxpayer in Waukesha County.

That's interesting, but who's #1?

No answer.

Withholding the name of the largest taxpayer violates a basic rule of reporting: Don't raise questions and leave them unanswered.

Surprise! Sprawl At Pabst Farms To Cost More Tax Dollars!!

Turns out that folks at a Waukesha County Department of Transportation meeting last Thursday began to come to grips with a reality about the highly-touted Pabst Farms project that somehow had escaped their recognition.

It's gonna cost more tax money to deal with.

In other words: if you put 1,200 residences, a large hospital, an elementary school, a YMCA, a shopping center, various other commercial buildings, and, oh yes, a million-square-foot upscale shopping mall on farmland, you will generate a lot of new traffic.

So much traffic that Waukesha County will have to widen three, two-lane roads near the 1,500-acre project to at least four lanes (so maybe six lanes?) at a cost of about $20 million.

Those expenses are on top of additional cost changes, in the $20-25 million range, to the state's plan to widen the so-called I-94 'freeway' at the project's doors.

Maybe that's the problem. That free part.

Freeways are not free.

They are 100% paid for with tax dollars.

Yet many people think there aren't social and public budgetary costs - - consequences, if you will - - to projects so big that they literally change the landscape.

Faced with having to raise more tax money where a taxpayer revolt is supposed to be active, some Waukesha officials hope to pay for part of the new county road network with a subsidy from state sales tax collections. That might happen.

And maybe the Pabst Farms developer will kick in a contribution. But here's the hard truth: local and county officials wanted this project, and moved heaven and a lot of earth to get it underway, and now the real bills have to be paid.

How about having the shoppers kick in a buck each time they enter a mall parking lot? That's what you pay if you make a purchase at The Shops at Grand Avenue, in downtown Milwaukee, to park in a mall ramp.

One last set of questions: Are Waukesha County taxpayers also ready to pony up more tax dollars if the project's stormwater and sewer components fail to efficiently connect with supply and treatment facilities in the area?

Or if the project needs more fresh water than planners projected?

Of if the development distorts the region's underground water supply because its pavement - - now to include miles of new roads - - rests right on the very acreage through which rain and snowmelt seeps downward and replenishes the water table?

Sprawl hits hard at all public infrastructure costs - - roads, fresh water, safety, education, sewage treatment - - and that's why those costs are minimized when development is focused where infrastructure is already in place.

With the costs spread across a large base.

In cities.

People who might rightly complain the loudest in Waukesha County about the rising public costs of Pabst Farms are City of Waukesha property taxpayers.

They've already paid for basic infrastructure, and it has helped spur some downtown condos there.

But now sprawl at Pabst Farms has leap-frogged downtown Waukesha, requiring Waukesha city residents to send property tax money westward in the county portion of their bills.

And even farther from the Waukesha City limits if the massive residential, mall and commercial complex is approved that developer Bob Lang wants abutting Lapham Peak State Park just inside the Waukesha County line in rural Delafield.

More On Pabst Farms: Kurt Bauer Weighs In And He Might Surprise You

Kurt Bauer, executive director emeritus of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, weighs in on sprawl, Pabst Farms, and the decision to build that big interchange on I-94 to serve the mega-mall coming to the Pabst Farms project.

In a nutshell, his personal view is that Pabst Farms should have remained agricultural property, and that unheeded efforts to contain sprawl like Pabst Farms and smaller, "incremental" developments have been "crying in the wilderness."

Though retired from SEWRPC as its long-time executive director Bauer chairs its water supply advisory committee and is a paid agency consultant.

Early Pabst Farms Mall Developer In Bankruptcy

The now bankrupt-General Growth's 2007 pullout from the Pabst Farms project should again be a wake-up call to those still believing that there is mall potential at that Western Waukesha County development.

General Growth also operates Mayfair Mall, in Wauwatosa, and a host of malls in the Chicago area. Nationally, it is the nation's number-two mall operator.

Some big-boxes huddled together at Pabst Farms in a strip mall with mega-parking lots - - maybe (though those come and go, a la Circuit City - - but General Growth bailed out of the initial, and now-dead upscale "lifestyle center" at Pabst Farms for a reason.

It'd flop.

With housing and consumer spending in the tank, a shopping mall at Pabst Farms is dead, and the legislature should order the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to stop throwing more good money after bad, and to justify the $9 million WisDOT has already spent on Wisconsin's interstate interchange to nowhere.

New Pabst Farms Mall To Be...A Mall

I'm not a shopping mall obsessive, but I do know that the new mall at Bayshore is of the 'outdoor' variety, as opposed to the older-style, enclosed mall.

Bayshore Town Center offers the feeling of a neighborhood's retail district, with streets and streetscapes and other amenities designed to break up the boxy, old-fashioned mall where you park your car, and walk into arcades on a floor or two of stores on either side of the aisles.

For example, most of Mayfair is a giant, enclosed mall, with a few newer, stand-alone, big-name stores in or very close to the complex.

But outdoor, it ain't.

Some people apparently hoped that that the million-square-foot upscale mall at Pabst Farms would be of the newer, outdoor design, since everything is supposed to be the latest and greatest when it comes to Pabst Farms retail tenants.

But if you're looking for the trendier, outdoor mall version at Pabst Farms, all of which is being built on top of once open-space through which the underground water supply got its recharging rain and snow melt - - surely at least as important to the live-blood of the region as more subdivisions and intensified shopping - - get ready to be disappointed.

A local Waukesha County newspaper, paper, the Kettle Moraine Index, describes the mall this way:

"Plans for 110 acres at I-94 and Highway 67 include a 1,000-foot-long interior shopping mall flanked by three 140,000- to 180,000-square-foot, two-story anchor stores, two "junior" anchor stores, including a 28,000-square-foot bookstore and a separate 16-screen movie theater."

The news may make it less certain that taxpayers will rush to plunk down a fresh $20 million in taxes to pay for a spanking-new I-system interchange to get retail shoppers in and out of Pabst Farms.

Under Dan Warren, Waukesha Water Utility Has Spent Big On Draft Water Plan

I posted some numbers on Friday about the escalating estimated cost of hooking up the City of Waukesha Water Utility to Lake Michigan water - - $78 million when the water utility was drafting the diversion application in 2009 to a $183 million estimate more recently disclosed by utility officials.

The utility says it is the final stages of preparing its delayed, much-revised application draft for delivery to Wisconsin reviewers at the DNR; additional reviews and hearings are on tap for the application in seven Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces if the DNR decides the application is ready for prime time.

To reach this point, the utility has, for years, spent heavily on application technical consultants, on public relations experts and lobbyists both in Wisconsin and in Washington, DC, and lawyers.

Along with utility staff time, the administrative costs associated with the application are surely past the $1 million mark - - the meter has been running for years - -  and more expenses, including possible litigation, will be incurred as the application moves along.

The president of the utility as it has become absorbed in the application is Dan Warren, a pivotal figure in Waukesha-area public and private-sector concerns.

Warren has served on the water utility commission for more than 20 years; he was instrumental in bringing on Dan Duchniak - - the second of Waukesha's 'two Dans' who've been honchoing the diversion strategy - - as utility general manager.

Warren's current term - -  and perhaps his last, observers said last week - - expires at the end of this month, which would coincide with the application's final draft delivery to the DNR.

Warren also sits on the Waukesha school district board, and is project manager at Pabst Farms, the western Waukesha County planned community built on open space between I-94 and downtown Oconomowoc but which has not lived up to some initial expectations.

The State of Wisconsin did expand access to Pabst Farms by fast-tracking the construction of a "full-diamond" interstate interchange for the development, in part to deliver customers to a long-promised regional-destination retail mall that was never got built.

One dispute over the retail development at Pabst Farms recently led to litigation between Pabst Farms  and the City of Oconomwoc; neither Pabst Farms or the water diversion plan - - both big projects with lots of moving pieces and hurdles - - have exactly enjoyed smooth sailing these past few years.

State Transportation Manual Suggests Pabst Farm Interchange Local Shares Too Low

When a cost-sharing plan for the $25 million I-94 interchange for the now-cancelled Pabst Farms shopping mall was announced, the local governments and the developer were assigned very small shares.

This was the breakdown - - State, $21.9 million (84.4%); Waukesha County, $1.75 million (7%); developer, also $1.75 million (7%); City of Oconomowoc, $400,000 (1.6%).

At the time, with the three local shares totalling about 15%, I called for an investigation by the Wisconsin Audit Bureau, and the legislative Joint Audit Committee.

A new mall developer is said to be close to announcing a construction plan, though it is not clear if the reconstituted mall will be same size and scale of the now-cancelled "upscale mall" previously planned by the same company that pulled out. That company also owns Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa.

Government officials have denied that big-box stores would replace the mall concept planned as an anchor for the Pabst Farms.

To determine if the interchange proposal came with normal local cost shares, I obtained a copy of the applicable Wisconsin Department of Transportation's Division of Investment Management "Program Management Manual," Document No. 03-25-01.

It's the document that tells local governments and developers if and why they have to bear a share of road projects that are "not local highway, bridge or multi-modal projects," the manual says in bold-face.

The manual suggests that the "local cost sharing" assignment in highway expansion or interchange projects is often in the range of 25%-100%, with the degree of "local benefit" and "significant local traffic" being heavy determinants.

It is not clear what WisDOT language from the manual has been applied to fit the Pabst Farms interchange, and there is wiggle room in some of the criteria, but it looks like the shares announced give the developer and the local governments multi-million breaks:

Section "4.4.2 Modified or Upgraded Access," (section numbers are bold-faced throughout) says this:

"Modified or upgraded access, either intersections or interchanges, are 100 percent funded by the developer if the need for the access being changed serves a local development only."

Sounds like the proposed Pabst Farms mall interchange to me, as the plan all along was to add an interchange off I-94 to serve the so-far non-existent shopping mall.

The interchange construction plan calls for replacing a nearby off-ramp that does not provide service in both directions, and which certainly does not serve the mall property, with a full "diamond-interchange" that will provide access to the mall from both directions off I-94.

The mall site at the so-called Pabst Farms Town Centre takes up 184 acres of a total of 1,600 in the overall development - - so big, that when finished, and its 1,500 units of housing are built-out, it could double the population of Oconomowoc.

Other criteria in the transportation project manual call for different cost distribution percentages - - a local share of 25%, according to Section 4.3.1 Add Additional Travel Lanes, for example, "if the project adds additional travel lanes and meets the "significant local traffic criteria" - - and WisDOT has the authority to negotiate the shares, manual section says.

Is the new interchange, and pavement from the interstate to the parking lots for shoppers, a travel lane?

Essentially the interchange is being rushed into planning because the mall, if one is to be built, can't open without access off I-94, and no one budgeted for the interchange until some crisis meetings earlier in the fall.

So much for coordinating use planning with transportation decisions - - a stated goal of the local cost sharing process in the WisDot manual, by the way.

So someone or a group did address and answer some of the these questions when it was decided that a local share of about 84%-7%-7%-1.6 %were required - - but by whom, and why, and how was the decision made to keep the local shares so low - - in Oconomowoc's case, 1.6%, though the mall goes in the heart of that city's largest development ever?

Is it that fair to state taxpayers in Ashland, or Boscobel, or Racine, for whom the benefits of the mall are much farther from the developer's bottom line, the City of Oconomowoc, and other parts of Waukesha County?

How about some sunlight on the process and decision-making that gave the locals such a sweetheart deal.

How about someone looking out for the taxpayers?

Again, let's bring in the investigators.

And let's have the answers out on the table before the next, rumored developer waltzes in and picks off such a preferential arrangement.

Investigate The Pabst Farm Mall Interchange - - Now

It's time to bring in the investigators.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee and its partner, the Legislative Audit Bureau, exist to double-check state spending, and they need turn their attention immediately to the emerging fiscal fiasco at Highway P off Interstate 94 in semi-rural Western Waukesha County.

That is where the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, (WisDOT), administratively decided to commit at least $21.3 million in state funds to create a full-scale "Diamond Interchange" for a shopping mall at the Pabst Farms project in Western Waukesha County - - mall construction now abandoned by the developer.

WisDOT made this commitment in discussions with Waukesha area government and business interests at Pabst Farms without any hearings, and before the legislature approved funding for the potential expansion of that segment of interstate.

If WisDOT officials didn't know that the mall was on life-support, and the developer was about to drop its project, then WisDOT's people, especially those at the department's District Two offices in Waukesha County, were not doing their jobs.

And if they knew, but continued with the interchange commitment while guessing/hoping that the site would fill in with something - - man, oh man - - they have some explaining to do, because betting on the come with $21 million of other people's money should not be how state bureaucrats manage our business.

And did they even consider a transit connection to Pabst Farms, for workers, residents and shoppers?

Did they forget that transit planning and assistance is also part of the WisDOT mission?

Were they told to forget about it?

Is anybody minding the store at WisDOT, or is it back to the bad old days when Tommy Thompson pal Chuck ("no relation") Thompson was WisDOT secretary, and said the agency's job was just to let contracts?

The public needs answers to these questions, and that's why the legislature has trusted mechanisms to get them answered.

If there is no inquiry, and no hearings, then WisDOT can continue to spend money and make land use policy in the region without the control of elected officials and the public's authentic participation.

And the same questions need to be asked of local officials and governments in Waukesha County, where more than $2 million additional public dollars were committed in the same hurried fashion for the interchange, despite allegedly tight budgets everywhere, and public pressures for lower taxes and reduced spending.

Remember: the interchange financing pressure became something of an 'emergency' because the state, Waukesha County and City of Oconomowoc didn't coordinate planning at Pabst Farms with the project owners.

For some time, a huge, regional, upscale mega-mall was on its drawing boards, but no one penciled in the interchange financing.

Now the mall has come and gone, but the interchange planning continues.

The state's fiscal watchdogs need to get to the bottom of this mess, and if the local governments are smart, they will take their shares out of their budgets before final adoption later this fall.

For the locals, the budgets schedules are in their favor. Money can be saved.

Face, too.

But WisDOT operates with such insularity and arrogance that it can't be counseled to do the right thing with any expectation of a reasonable outcome - - which in this case is simply to pull the plug on having earmarked money for a road to no where without permission.

So quick and unambiguous pressure delivered by legislators and watchdog auditors at the State Capitol is a necessity to get WisDOT's attention, and action.

New Conservative Core Value: Secret Shopping?

Apologies in advance if I've missed it, but why haven't our government-bashing talk radio jocks been ripping the plan to spend more than $23 million in public funds to build that interstate highway interchange to nowhere out at Pabst Farms?

The Pabst Farms planned (sic) community was to include an upscale mega-mall, but no one thought about providing its shoppers with appropriate easy-on-and-off access from the interstate in Western Waukesha County.

(Forget a transit line linking Pabst Farms to downtown Waukesha or points farther away in, gasp, Milwaukee: the deliberately tonied-up Pabst Farms has nothing to do with transit.)

So the state, Waukesha County, the City of Oconomowoc and the then-mall developer rushed forward a plan last month to break ground on the fast-tracked interchange by next spring.

And even though the mall developer bailed out of the Pabst Farm picture a few days ago, the subsidized interchange plan is still on track - - to a now-mallless site that might have a big box store or stores instead.

Does that justify a taxpayer-paid interstate interchange, slapped onto the drawing boards with little public input, or awareness of what it will do to nearby lakes, streams, and underground water reserves?

Talk about big government moving at Warp speed, and in denial at the same time - - the state transportation department had enough fat in its budgets to commit and keep committed more than $20 million, while Waukesha County has pledged $1.75 million and the City of Oconomowoc pledged another $400,000, too.

All this is tax money, mind you: you'd think conservatives on the air and in political organizations would be howling about bloated government throwing subsidies at a private business, but there's been a virtual blackout from the Right on the entire subject (save for the blogger James Widgerson).

I keep expecting to hear from the Waukesha County contingent in the once-visible, anti-tax group Committee for Responsible Government, but I guess it's less interested in cutting taxes and more interested in clipping coupons.

Is this a case of the emperor wearing no clothes, or hiding out in case Brooks Brothers moves in?

Even if Foxconn disappears, Vos the Sprawlville King is a winner

Call this Chapter 70 in my occasional series, "The Road to Sprawlville."

We don't yet know whether the scandalously-'planned' and politically-greased Foxconn project will collapse quickly or shrink into broken-promise irrelevancy - - or whether politicians will be bold enough to say "mea culpa" and cut the public's losses - - but one thing we know for sure:

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos managed in a state without two spare potholes-filling nickels to rub together to steer to and through his district a quarter of a billion federal and state road-and-interchange widening dollars that will trigger sprawl beyond bulldozed Mount Pleasant farms even if Foxconn never diverts a gallon of Lake Michigan water to produce a single big screen LCD TV.


Look at it as an adjunct to the gerrymandering Vos helped create that serves his own interests - - interests his caucus wants to protect through litigation, voter suppression and power-grabbing lame-duck legislating.

Gerrymandering lets legislators pick their own voters and pack them into favorably-drawn legislative districts.

Spending gobs of public highway money to serve those constituents with cars - - to hell with transit and those lowly bus riders, as Vos has indicated - - and attract more businesses, residents and voters moving into new subdivisions keeps the whole self-serving, incumbent-preserving, sprawl-inducing wheel moving with Vos' friendly hand at the helm.

2/7/18 update - - And as One Wisconsin Now is reporting, Vos owns several businesses and real estate in the area where the transportation infrastructure is being substantially upgraded. 

Vos’ financial disclosures reveal his significant personal wealth that includes millions in real estate holdings and businesses incorporated as Robin J. Vos Enterprises, Inc. and Romata LLP. Romata owns property assessed as manufacturing that houses popcorn manufacturing and packing operations under the corporate umbrella of Robin J. Vos Enterprises.

Note how many people in Vos' Racine County are lower-income.transit dependent, according to United Way data.

Here is my Foxconn archive, fully-updated, since Walker scribbled out the deal on one sheet of paper in June, 2017.

Foxconn might leave some egg on Vos's face, but he can mix it with the bigger servings of bacon he's bringing home - - a meal that will keep him and his allies full for years. 

Here's a post I wrote about Vos, Foxconn and sprawl last year:
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SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2018

Not Wisconn. Sprawlville

[Update: Foxconn tells WISN-TV's Sunday morning host Mike Gousha it is "surprised" it is not being welcomed with open arms. 

Walker had said the same thing not long ago, and I suggested at the time he bears the blame for poorly prepping Foxconn about the multiple political, fiscal and environmental norms the Foxconn project is bulldozing for Walker's career benefit.]
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For years on this blog I posted stories about destructive 'planning' in Wisconsin under the title "The Road to Sprawlville."

Chapter 4 was about the proposed re-purposing of "Cow Corner" in the Village of Wales for a Walgreen's and some retail stores; posts often focused on Waukesha County projects and paving, sometimes with photographs.

(I wish I had organized them into a single, continuing post, as I have done with Foxconn, but if you enter "The Road to Sprawlville" into the blog index at the upper left they will all come up.) 

Chapter 55 had something of a summary to that point in 2013: 

Wherein we renew our long-running series "The Road To Sprawlville" and revisit frequent stop Pabst Farms - - the planned 'community' on Western Waukesha County cornfields where stalled development and dead dreams of a Bayshore-style mall have lapsed into litigation with the city that lavished millions of dollars in subsidies on the site.

Pabst Farms and other Waukesha sites date to the early days (2007) of The Road to Sprawlville:

For the record, earlier posts in my occasional series about Sprawlville, are here, (on the road to Ft. Atkinson), here (in Dousman), and here (somewhat of a detour - - on the $25 million "diamond-design" I-94 interchange planned to service the planned upscale shopping mall at Pabst Farms, Sprawlville's Capital City). 

And the State Legislature is doing its best to bring Sprawlville to Dane County, showcasing how Team Walker continues to serve the 'pave-it-over' crowd.

But given what we now know about Foxconn - - an extensive archive about the project since July, 2017, is here - - its 3,000 rural acres headed for bulldozing, piping in daily of millions of diverted Great Lakes water, generation of massive amounts of polluted wastewater and dirty air emissions, exemptions from environmental impact reviews, clean air standards, wetlands-filling protections, and inducement of heavy traffic in and out of the project on vastly-expanded roads, it's time for me to remove the title "Sprawlville's Capital City" from Pabst Farms to the west and award it to the Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant.

Where the official ground-breaking, and a rally in protest, are scheduled for June 28th.

Walker wants the area designed "Wisconn Valley," thinking that his inventing a brand with tortured language somehow makes real a link with Silicon Valley.

But what he's doing, rather paradoxically, is firming up the notion of a con and calling attention to what he and his public-policy renegades deleting from both "conservation" and "conservatism:"

Abandoning any pretense to supporting clean air and water. And violating what fiscally-conservative GOP politicians used to stand for: local control, private property rights, restrained borrowing and avoiding the use of government to pick marketplace winners and losers.

So the 69th chapter of "The Road to Sprawlville" now runs from State Capitol to rural Racine County and right through to Mount Pleasant by bulldozing the land, diverting the water, polluting the air and evading or breaking traditional Wisconsin practices and values.

Pabst Farms 1% Solution For Downtown Oconomowoc

The million-square foot upscale mall planned for Pabst Farms will also send an estimated 10,000 visitors a month on into downtown Oconomowoc, the mall developers say.

That's a relative handful - - maybe 1-3% of mall visitors - - that will drive into town, the mall developers say.

Hard to imagine that if 97-99% of shoppers stay put in the mall that the traditional downtown store owners will feel compensated for their contributions to the millions in public dollars invested by Oconomowoc into the Pabst Farms development out at the interstate.

And those taxpayer contributions will continue, as police, fire and other services are provided to the mall and the rest of the commercial and residential occupants of Pabst Farms properties.

No One Wants The Pabst Farms Mall Interchange Built, Records Show

People had their chance to urge public funding for a highway interchange to a privately-owned shopping mall owner in Western Waukesha County, and no one raised a hand in support, records show.

Here's the story:

Kenneth Yunker, SEWRPC's Deputy Director, made available what he described as the sum total of about 50 comments mailed or emailed to the agency to help planners decide whether the proposed I-94 interchange to an upscale shopping mall planned at Pabst Farms should move forward.

In order for the interchange to be funded and built, a regional transportation plan covering 2007-2010 projects would have to be amended; advisory public comments on such amendments are part of the process.

SEWRPC - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - is the agency delegated to accept such comments.

The interchange would cost $25 million, most of it state money, and is on a planning fast-track because officials had failed to include it in the overall Pabst Farms scheme.

Some background is here.

Pabst Farms is a mini-city on 1,500 acres of former farmland that now is the gateway from I-94, north along state highway 67 to the City of Oconomowoc.

Some of the parcels are on the south side of the interstate, too.

The overall development is set to contain 1,200 houses and condos (no apartments, no transit service), plus a hospital, offices, light manufacturing, a school, a YMCA, stores and shops - - and the retail centerpiece: a regional, upscale mall, first designed to mimic Mayfair Mall, but now to look more like the open-air Bayshore Town Center mall.

The initial mall plan fell through some months ago, and the replacement design is even more controversial because it's larger, places unsightly store backs, even Dumpsters facing the road leading to Oconomowoc, and raises the profile of adjacent proposed big-box stores, too.

Waukesha County, the City of Oconomowoc and the mall developer are to pay a total of $3.9 million of the cost, while $21.1 million would come from the state - - you and me and other taxpayers - - though some highway extensions to service private developments, or local communities, require much higher shares.

So I went out to SEWRPC today to read the comment file - - and found that the backers of the interchange completely whiffed: there was not one comment of support for the project in the file.

People from River Hills, Wauwatosa, Milwaukee, Brown Deer, Oconomowoc, Mequon, Summit, Madison and Racine registered objections.

Remarks like "oppose...strongly oppose...huge waste of tax dollars...travesty...poor public policy...height of irresponsibility...and outrage" were sprinkled throughout the letters and emails.

Commenters, some on form letters, said they preferred more transit spending, didn't want more road-building to contribute to air pollution, opposed private development receiving a public highway subsidy and wanted farmland preserved.

Four non-profit organizations and one unit of government sent in comments of opposition, too.

They organizations were the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Foundation, (ACLU-WI), Midwest Environmental Advocates (a public interest law firm), NAACP Milwaukee Branch and 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.

Additionally, the City of Milwaukee opposed amending the 2007-2010 regional highway plan and funding the interchange, but supported including it in a future transportation plan for the region "as necessary when the schedule and traffic demand associated with the proposed regional shopping mall have been defined."

That letter was signed by four Milwaukee officials: Jeffrey Mantes, Commissioner of Public Works, Jeffrey Polenske, City Engineer, Paul Vornholt, Intergovernmental Relations and Michael Maierle, Long Range Planning, Department of City Development.

Investigate Pabst Farms Interchange Spending

Eighteen months ago, I urged on this blog that there be a probe of the state's agreement to spend $21.3 million on an I-94 interchange to a mall at Pabst Farms that had not yet been built.

The spending seemed little more than a subsidy to serve one private property owner.

The project has been dropped by one developer, and picked up conceptually by another company that has substantially changed the design - - on paper - - from the original, upscale "lifestyle" center to an undistinguished group of planned big box and strip-mall chain stores.

Now, thanks to the outstanding reportorial work of Waukesha blogger Jim Bouman, we learn that with the project in limbo, and in an economy so bad that subdivision construction at Pabst Farms has been suspended, the state transportation department has already spent more than $8 million for land acquisition and other interchange planning and preparation expenses.

This is nothing less than a public subsidy to Pabst Farms and a maybe-mall builder, and cries out for an investigation - - especially as local communities like Milwaukee are being turned down for transportation stimulus project financing because projects are not "shovel-ready."

This is a horrible waste of precious public funds, and will pressure Oconomowoc to pony up $400,000 it once was assigned to spend on the project, as well as a similar $1.75 million expected from Waukesha County.

And has the mall developer put in its share of $1.75 million?

WisDOT was able to begin spending because the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission put the project on a fast-tracked eligibility list, so all the institutional power brokers in the region have had a role in this unfolding boondoggle.

Legislators should begin by asking the State Legislative Audit Bureau to probe the spending.

Now.

Planning Troubles Still On Tap At Pabst Farms

You have to ask: Did anyone have a checklist out there in Oconomowoc when that city in Waukesha County approved the signature shopping mall planned - - and I use that term advisedly - - for Pabst Farms?

That's the 1,500 acres that was once cropland in Western Waukesha County that's morphing into a mixed-use site for a hospital, shopping areas, commercial properties, an elementary school, a YMCA and 1,200 units of upscale, single-family residences.

But as planned communities go, contradictions abound.

There was a flurry of publicity recently when it was discovered that the project's one-million square-foot, high-end shopping mall would require a major interstate highway interchange, lest shoppers be forced to wend their way to mall parking lots through local roads.

The interchange would cost $20 million, a tidy sum not included in state highway budgets; local officials piped up quickly to say their budgets didn't project that kind of spending.

In April, a different planning glitch had surfaced about the mall's future - - and that misstep has also been confirmed:

Oconomowoc doesn't have enough liquor licenses for about a dozen restaurants and bars set to become mall tenants.

Now there's a planning problem!

The wheels are already spinning to change some transportation budget schedules and get the Pabst Farms shopping mall the interchange that someone forgot to pencil in.

And if you think legislators dance to the tune of the road-builders, wait until you see how fast they jitterbug across the Capitol with their lobbying partners to get that liquor license shortfall fixed.

Developers and politicians in exurbia bristle at the term "sprawl." They say the term suggests development that's without a big picture in mind, that overlooks details and consequences.

It's hard to disassociate "sprawl" from Pabst Farms the more we hear about the planning flubs surrounding its so-called commercial centerpiece - - its Town Centre regional shopping mall.

Blogs and Media Following Pabst Farms 'Modifications'

Pabst Farms 'planning' is a great example of what can happen when a new city is plopped down on a farm field, and the Sprawled Out blog has followed similar matters in Franklin, so I begin with that.

It's a good blog. I'm glad to plug it, so check it out.

Back to Pabst Farms, where the upscale mall is getting bigger, but not necessarily better.

And as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Amy Rinard notes, the redesigned mall site at the northern convergence of Highway 67 and I-94 in Western Waukesha County has a new developer who has added a string of big-box stores backing up to what could become the entry way to the City of Oconomowoc - - welcoming motorists to Lake Country with a panorama of store backs, parking and Dumpsters.

That ain't New Urbanism. It's more like Old Urbanwasism, where everything serving the car separated retail and pedestrians from the street, and the visual environment got trashed.

It's a dead model, but that's what the mall planners say their client stores want, and have told Oconomowoc officials they know more about retail needs than does the city.

Strange strategy, since Oconomowoc put $24 million in public tax dollars into Pabst Farms to citify the rural land, and still has mall design and construction approvals, and another cash payment to make on the interchange plan to make it go forward.

Speaking of the interchange, state and local governments in Waukesha County are hell-bent to begin work on that fast-tracked, $25 million I-94 interchange to the site, even as the design is changing and getting iffier by the minute.

Here's another good account of the issues from the Daily Reporter.