PRESS EDITORIAL: Nature preserve is more important than border angst

The last thing the City of Port Washington has to worry about is a rival municipality blocking its growth to the south.

Port Washington’s southern border has been pushed so far into the Town of Grafton that the city has more than enough space to fulfill even its most unrealistic development dreams.

In 2000, in a breathtaking attempt at urban sprawl, the city annexed hundreds of acres of Town of Grafton farmland miles south of the Port’s city center and sewer and water utilities.

Twenty years later, it is fair to ask: How did that work out for the city? The answer: Not very well.

There has been zero development of the land and, because it is zoned for agriculture, scant tax revenue. Several pie-in-the-sky development attempts have come to nothing.

The only bright spot is the imminent creation of a nature preserve on 135 acres of the land. The preserve, an initiative of the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust in partnership with Ozaukee County, needs the endorsement of the Port Washington Common Council to qualify for an essential state grant.

It was in this context that Ald. Mike Gasper recently expressed doubt over council approval of the nature preserve on grounds that it would limit city growth by creating a permanent south border. He suggested that the Village of Grafton or the City of Mequon could take advantage of this by annexing land south of the nature center for development.

That possibility can be classified as “highly unlikely” in the case of Grafton and “will never happen” in the case of Mequon. But even if that concern had merit, it would not be a justification for the city to stand in the way of the nature preserve, which will exist as a perpetual enrichment to the lives of the residents of Port Washington and the rest of Ozaukee County and the generations that follow them.

To be named the Clay Bluffs Cedar Gorge Nature Preserve, the natural area is located near Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve and shares some of that county park’s dramatic Lake Michigan bluff topography. It includes three-fourths of mile of unspoiled shoreline.

Besides protecting land of exceptional character from development, the new preserve would meet a demand for public access to nature and the majesty of a Great Lake. Lion’s Den is the most visited county park, to the point of being overcrowded at some times, with 170,000 visitors expected in 2020.

Ironically, the presence of the nature preserve would likely be an incentive to residential development of nearby city land as an asset valued by dwellers seeking a countrified environment.

The Land Trust and county are seeking a $2 million Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant from the Wisconsin DNR to pay the Waukesha State Bank for the Clay Bluffs preserve tract. The bank acquired the land when it foreclosed on loans that developer Vincent Kuttemperoor used to buy the farmland that was subsequently annexed by the City of Port Washington.

It was Kuttemperoor who charmed the city into annexing the land in 2000 with visions of tax-base grandeur in his plan to create the eponymous Port Vincent development that would  include 1,300 homes (some with seven-figure prices), condos, a hotel and a citylike core of retail, commercial and office buildings and even a marina. Kuttempoorer’s company, VK Development, went bankrupt before Port Vincent amounted to anything more than a grandiose fantasy.

It seems particularly odd that the city would worry about any hindrances to annexing land beyond its current southern border when it is having difficulty managing the development of more valuable land much closer to the city proper, including the lakeshore land east of South Wisconsin Street and Lakeshore Road that was acquired as a gift from We Energies.

It is safe to safe that parcel is one of the most desirable lakeshore development sites in all of southeast Wisconsin.

And yet, after inviting developers to submit proposals for a mixed-use subdivision including retail and commercial uses instead of the more logical upscale residential development, the city chose a developer who after agreeing to buy the land was unable to make required installment payments of the purchase price on schedule.

The development, called Prairie’s Edge, currently resides somewhere in real estate limbo.            

Tuesday night, the Common Council took up the Clay Bluffs issue and did the right thing by voting 6-1 to endorse the nature preserve.

The aldermen in the majority have the satisfaction of knowing their yes votes (Gasper voted no) will likely mean that, at last, something positive will result from the city’s foray into urban sprawl.