The city and Milwaukee County decided to strike first by suing the watchdog group Preserve Our Parks for questioning the shoreline of Lake Michigan and seeming to hold up the sale of the county-owned Transit Center site to developer Rick Barrett.
The city and county are defending a lakeshore line affirmed in Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele-backed state legislation in March 2014 that would allow the Transit Center to be sold to a private developer for commercial use. The legislation uses a 1913 map as well as the Department of Natural Resources’ blessing to place the shoreline on Lincoln Memorial Drive.
“We just wanted to start the process and get the ruling as soon as possible,” said County Corporation Counsel Paul Bargren. “It appears that to put the matter to rest we’re going to need court rulings as well as the statute.”
But Preserve Our Parks (POP) says the Legislature doesn’t have the power to draw lakefront boundaries—only the court has that ability. POP also argues that the land in question is former Lake Michigan lakebed and therefore is protected by the state constitution’s Public Trust Doctrine, which prohibits commercial development of former lakebed. The group says the historic shoreline from an 1884 map is west of Lincoln Memorial Drive and runs through the county-owned Transit Center and O’Donnell Park as well as the parcel south of Clybourn Street that’s being eyed by Johnson Controls for its new headquarters.
The city and county had asked the state Supreme Court to take up the matter, but the court rejected that request. Now, the case has landed in circuit court. The dispute must be resolved before the county can sell the Transit Center parcel to Barrett Visionary Development for the $122 million Couture development, which includes residential and retail space, a transit hub for the planned streetcar and $17 million of tax incremental financing (TIF) from the city.
The city and county claim in court records that POP’s insistence on its website and in public testimony that the Transit Center is former lakebed is creating uncertainty over the sale. “Because of POP’s threatened lawsuit, no title insurance company is currently willing to issue title insurance on the property, thus making it impossible for any redevelopment to occur, until the issue presented by this case is resolved,” they argue in court documents.
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John Lunz, president of POP, said he was surprised that the city and county had made the first move, since the Abele administration had stalled for two years on resolving the Transit Center title in court, as directed by the county board. Instead, the Abele administration worked with suburban Republican legislators to redraw the lakeshore line, first as a last-minute amendment to the state budget and then as standalone legislation last year.
“We’ve met with Rick Barrett a few times,” Lunz told the Shepherd. “We actually feel sorry for him because the county certainly didn’t do him any service.”
Lunz said that the Couture could be built if the residential and retail tower was built on the western third of the parcel while the public amenities, including the transit hub, was sited on the eastern portion, where he argues the Public Trust Doctrine is in effect.
“We aren’t anti-development,” Lunz said.
He said it was important for the court to affirm that the constitution’s Public Trust Doctrine trumps any act by the Legislature. He said the decision would have an impact not only on the lakefront properties in Milwaukee, but on shorelines around the state.
“If the Legislature can in fact define this as not protected by the Public Trust Doctrine, there’s nothing at all to stop the Legislature from doing the same thing” elsewhere, Lunz said.
O’Donnell’s Fate Still in Limbo
Lunz argued that the suit could affect the county’s attempt to reactivate the O’Donnell Park site. If a portion is on former lakebed, as POP asserts, then that part cannot be sold to a commercial developer.
Last December, the board narrowly rejected an offer by Northwestern Mutual Life (NML) to buy the 6.8-acre site. But other than unanimously authorizing an audit of its parking structure, pavilion and public plaza, the board is struggling to find consensus on what to do next.
A resolution sponsored by Board Chair Marina Dimitrijevic and supervisors Gerry Broderick and Patricia Jursik to begin discussions with the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) on a potential public-public partnership failed at the committee level but received a 9-7 vote by the full board. The minority, however, was able to hold it for another month. A bloc of supervisors and Abele also want to release a request for proposals (RFP) for the site, but that’s on hold as well.
Dimitrijevic told the Shepherd she was hopeful that the board could support preliminary discussions with MAM, since the resolution is only to study the county’s options with the museum and not begin any negotiations.
Dimitrijevic said the potential deal could please those who don’t want to sell land to a commercial developer as well as those who don’t want to be responsible for the parcel’s upkeep while recognizing the importance of the partnership between the county and MAM. It would also get around any issues concerning the Public Trust Doctrine on that site, she said.
“We thought, let’s use kind of the shell or the framework that was looked at for the NML deal and see if it might work in either a long-term lease or a sale to the art museum,” Dimitrijevic said.
MAM Director Dan Keegan testified in a Parks, Energy and Environment Committee hearing last month that 60% of the museum’s visitors use the O’Donnell Park parking garage, which is connected to the museum by a pedestrian bridge.
Keegan said he was concerned about selling O’Donnell Park to an unknown commercial developer via an RFP for short-term gain.
“We are not going away,” Keegan testified. “Our concern has been that developers in fact oftentimes do go away. They do come and go. They do create things for bottom-line profit or take existing opportunities and wring the profits out of them and walk away. We will not walk away.”
