EDITORIAL: It’s a lakefront icon. No, it’s not the lighthouse.

Name four historic structures that best identify Port Washington.

Three are easy because they inspire universal civic pride and respect:

St. Mary’s Church, that soaring gothic edifice overlooking the downtown from its dramatic perch high on one of the city’s storied hills.

The 1860 Light Station, emblem of the city’s maritime culture and symbol of ties to the country of Luxembourg, which restored the light tower.

The pierhead lighthouse, official symbol of its owner, the City of Port Washington.

And the fourth?

The power plant, a monumental presence on the city lakefront for nearly a century.

The city’s relationship with the We Energies power plant is complicated.

In its dominating size (the largest building in Ozaukee County), industrial aesthetics and daunting array of transmission towers and power lines, it is out of place on a small city’s waterfront. For decades, it blocked city growth south of the downtown and spewed airborne pollution from its stacks and wind-driven coal dust from its mountain of fuel that was so dangerous to human health it would be considered a criminal offense today.

On the plus side, the plant that was built in 1930-35 for $7.5 million ($135 million in 2024 dollars) in the depths of the Great Depression provided hundreds of well paying jobs and brought the city a steady stream of shared revenue from the state.

In a recent letter to the editor, an Ozaukee Press reader accurately pointed out that employment in the plant’s large and mostly local workforce provided the wherewithal for generations of Port families to build homes, pay college tuitions and support their community.

Since the plant was rebuilt and converted to gas-fired boilers, its workforce has been trimmed to a small team of technicians with big computers. But the new plant came with other changes—its emissions are cleaned up, the coal pile nuisance is gone and the facility is bookended by a sprawling lakeshore park and a popular public beach.

Nonetheless, the city’s relationship with the power plant amounts to making do with a problem that won’t go away.

This editorial page, along with many of the community’s residents, opposed the massive reinvestment in the plant announced in 2000. We Energies’ commitment to spend $665 million to upgrade the generating station would end any hope for a future without the enormous structure and its associated facilities on the city’s lakeshore.

Port Washington had lived with the power plant for 70 years. It had served its time contributing to the Wisconsin power grid. It was time for We Energies to move on.

As the towering mass of concrete, brick and steel that stands a short distance from the downtown attests, that didn’t happen.

We Energies stayed and built a new plant around the old one. But some consolation came with it in the form of public use of land that has become Coal Dock Park and south beach.

These were not gifts presented on the proverbial silver platter. They were the product of intense negotiations. Fortunately for the people of Port Washington, their city government representatives at the time were determined to get concessions (or what might also be called reparations for a long-time nuisance) in return for a permit to build the plant.

Mayor Mark Gottlieb and City Administrator Mark Grams, in one of the more important achievements in the annals of public service in Port Washington, successfully advocated in long sessions with the utility’s lawyers for the amenities around the plant the public now enjoys.

Their efforts are manifested in the dock promenade, boardwalks, vast green spaces and lake views of Coal Dock Park and the wide sand beach that has become one of the city’s most popular recreational features.

When those negotiations played out more than 20 years ago, the park was a brownfield soaked with toxic coal runoff and the beach was a rocky strip of shore strewn with concrete rubble and off limits to the public.

On perfect summer days, the beauty of the park and the beach almost make it possible to ignore the power plant that does not belong on the Port Washington lakefront.