| By Big Radio News Staff |
The city of Janesville appears to be ready to move forward acquiring the blighted former General Motors property.
On Monday, Janesville City Council is slated for a closed-door session to talk over acquiring the 250-acre former GM assembly plant and Jatco sites.
A meeting agenda says the council could take action “concerning property acquisitions and eminent domain within TIF 42 for blight elimination and urban renewal purposes.”
That’s legal speak for a condemnation process the city could use to seize the blighted, contaminated GM site. That would be the next move if the city’s unable to negotiate a sale price with Commercial Development Company.
Private negotiations between Janesville and Commercial Development have rolled out for months.
Company Development has cleared buildings from the GM property, but otherwise left it idle with known ground contamination from 100 years of heavy manufacturing. The contamination is capped only by the aging, crumbling pavement and concrete foundations Commercial Development opted to leave on the site.
GM left the site idle in 2009 and permanently closed the plant in 2017 — then sold the plant property and Jatco site to Commercial Development in 2018. Commercial Development spent a few years tearing down and hauling away the massive auto assembly plant buildings, but since 2020, the company has been mostly inactive at the site.
The city has threatened fines over the past half-decade to get Commercial Development to pay back property taxes, and to try to prompt some movement on the almost 100 acres of leftover concrete slabs and pavement on the plant site.
The city’s rules on property demolition require an owner t0 remove old concrete slabs, but the state Department of Natural Resources says it considers contamination at the GM site to be suitably covered by the concrete, which acts as a cap.
City officials have pointed out that in the 16 years since GM shuttered the Janesville plant, the concrete and asphalt cap on site have gradually crumbled. That’s in part from breakup as trees, bushes and brambles continue to push up through the cap, and wilderness slowly overtakes the site.
Attorneys the city hired last year have been in talks with Commercial Development for months. City staff have been giving the council monthly updates on the progress of the negotiations — but until now, the public has gotten scant information on where negotiations stand.
City Manager Kevin Lahner told Big Radio last fall he thought the city would be ready to move into the acquisition phase by mid-winter. If the city and Commercial Development do not reach an agreement on a sale price, then the city would declare condemnation.
Lahner said late last year that there was a significant gap between the city’s offer and Commercial Development’s asking price, although he did not elaborate.
Big Radio has reached out to Lahner and Commercial Development company officials Thursday seeking more insight into Monday’s planned council action.
The city aims to acquire the property to eventually clean up contamination at the 115-acre GM assembly plant parcel. But first it would launch plans to convert part of the 115-acre, former Jatco haul away yard to park space and residential.
The city’s applied for a $20-million Environmental Protection Agency grant it says would help launch redevelopment of the Jatco site. Lahner has said the city hopes to be on track to get ownership con
That Jatco site has significantly less environmental contamination compared to the 115-acre, main assembly plant site, although the city has a vision for cleanup and redevelopment of the main GM site.
That could take years, and city officials say it could cost tens of millions of dollars to remove concrete on the main site and clean up lingering heavy metal and petrochemical contamination underneath.
Big Radio will update this report as we learn more.
