| Big Radio News |
The Janesville City Council is asking city staff to offer payments of almost $4 million to several property owners in and around the former General Motors plant site.
After a three-hour-long closed session, outgoing council President David Marshick announced late Monday night the council is authorizing the city to file an “award of damages” of $3.5 million to GM site owner Commercial Development Company.
That is legalese for the city offering a price to buy the blighted, 115-acre former GM plant site, and the former JATCO site to the south. Those are the GM parcels the city has negotiated for months to buy through eminent domain.
The council also agreed to offer $356,000 in “damage” payments for a set of privately owned parcels next to the GM site.
The city’s pending offers to pay out the $4 million give no guarantees that Commercial Development or other owners would agree to the deal. The properties could still end up in court, where a judge would decide a sale price.
The agreements came after one family that owns properties adjacent to the GM site urged the city during public comment Monday night to offer a bigger purchase price than what was on the table.
Janesville resident Al Fugate is a relative of the owner of 1412 S. Jackson St., a property next door to GM. He told the city his family put money and dreams into the property. He pushed for a sale price that would afford enough relocation money to find a local replacement parcel.
Fugate told the council he thinks that in its haste to get control of the whole GM site and contiguous properties, the city has treated negotiations with smaller, adjacent property owners as an afterthought.
The council came out of its marathon closed session authorizing an offer of $53,000 in “damages” for the one-half-acre parcel at 1412 S. Jackson St. The council also authorized the city to pay out $303,000 in “damages” to Frank Silha and Sons, which owns an 8-acre parcel next to the GM site at 530 Kellogg.
The city of Janesville is trying to buy up the General Motors sites with plans to pursue federal cleanup and redevelopment funding to eventually remove soil contamination from the GM site. The state Department of Natural Resources says the contamination would have to be dealt with under most redevelopment plans.
The city has designated the GM site as a tax increment-financing district, which is a strategy to bankroll redevelopment prospects at the site.
Commercial Development Company bought the former General Motors site in 2018. The St. Louis-based brownfield redevelopment company tore down the GM plant’s more than 2 million square feet of factory buildings, but they left behind dozens of acres of rubble, asphalt and concrete pads from the GM days.
The city designated the GM site as a TIF district to remove blight from it, and for more than a year, the city has been working with a Milwaukee attorney on negotiations to buy the GM site and a few adjacent parcels through condemnation.
