Pabst Farms building, and still growing

Completion of zoning change expected to lead to hospital, mall construction

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 15, 2006

By AMY RINARD
arinard@journalsentinel.com

Oconomowoc - One of the fastest-growing areas in one of the fastest-growing counties in Wisconsin is about to really start growing, and that brings opportunities as well as challenges for far western Waukesha County.

A zoning change that is key to the settlement of a long-standing lawsuit filed by Aurora Health Care against the city is expected to be completed by the end of this month.

That will clear the way for Aurora to begin construction of a $166 million hospital and medical clinic complex on land known as the Summit triangle at the southeast corner of I-94 and Highway 67 in Pabst Farms.

When Aurora gets the go-ahead to build, the health care provider will release its hold on land in another part of Pabst Farms, north of the interstate, setting the stage for construction of a 110-acre shopping mall proposed by General Growth Properties.

Where now there are vast expanses of open space in Pabst Farms, bulldozers and building crews are expected to be working next year on two of the largest projects yet scheduled for the 1,500-acre development.

In the meantime, William Nieman, executive vice president of Pabst Farms Development Inc., said a number of other projects are in the final stages of receiving city approvals:

• A Hilton Garden Inn hotel in the Village Square area.
• The Residences at Village Square, 144 condominium units ranging in size from 1,400 to 2,000 square feet and priced from $295,000 to $375,000 each.
• Lake County Village, 205 single-family homes on half-acre lots ranging in price from $550,000 to $750,000 for a lot and home package.
• Interlaken Village, 26 homes on one-acre lots ranging in price from $750,000 to $1 million and more for a home/lot package.

In addition, new homes continue to rise in the East Lake Village residential section of Pabst Farms where home and lot packages range from $400,000 to $500,000.

But much of what is developed next in the retail areas of Pabst Farms, including the Village Square near the northeast corner of I-94 and Highway 67 adjacent to General Growth's proposed mall, will depend on the large mall project, said Peter Paul Bell, president of Pabst Farms Development.

"General Growth is the engine of retail and everyone else will feed off of that," he said.

South of the interstate, in the Summit triangle adjacent to Aurora's project, a variety of other clinics, medical offices and other health care related businesses are expected in what Bell calls a health and wellness campus.

"There is a certain flywheel effect of a hospital," he said, noting that a hospital typically attracts certain other businesses from florists and coffee shops to medical supply stores and extended-stay hotels.

Up to now, building projects at Pabst Farms have primarily involved existing local businesses moving to higher-class digs, leaving vacant buildings in their wake in other parts of the city.

The Pick 'n' Save moved from its store across Highway 67 into a new store at Pabst Farms, leaving its old store empty. That store is next to another long-closed grocery store whose building has been vacant for many years.

The local YMCA built a new building in the development near the East Lake Village residential area. The new Summit Elementary School next to the YMCA left behind its aging school building at the corner of Highway 67 and Valley Road.

This month a new M&I bank opened near the Pick 'n' Save store, leaving its old building just across Highway 67 empty.

Mayor Maury Sullivan acknowledges that the shifting of businesses from other parts of the city into Pabst Farms has some area residents worried about the seeming proliferation of vacant commercial buildings in the city.

"It's caused some concern, but that's part of the market place," he said. "There's not much the city can do about it."

Those empty spaces, he said, especially those along Highway 67 near Pabst Farms, including the M&I bank and Pick 'n' Save store, are bound to draw new tenants as commercial development at Pabst Farms starts to take off with the General Growth project.

"We have to work through the economic cycle," Sullivan said. "It does create other opportunities when those existing buildings become vacant."

Commercial development already has picked up along Highway 67 north of Pabst Farms, where a new Stein Garden Center just opened, several strip malls have been built and another one is planned for the site of the old Summit school.

Sullivan is aware that development of the large new mall, intended to be a regional shopping destination complete with restaurants and entertainment opportunities, poses a defining moment for the city's older downtown shopping district where there already are a number of vacant storefronts.

The central commercial district will have to create its own niche in the city's new larger retail environment and work to lure shoppers from Pabst Farms, he said.

"The downtown will have to have its own character and its own vision of itself; and now it's struggling," Sullivan said

"It's possible and necessary to develop some unified identity and direction. In my thinking, General Growth will prompt that and if downtown merchants are going to survive, they're going to do that."

With its own school, grocery store, bank, Starbucks, YMCA and residential subdivisions, city officials are aware of the danger of Pabst Farms becoming its own city, or, as Sullivan says, "a second Oconomowoc," where people rarely venture out into the rest of the city.
"If it became Pabst Farms with the appendage of Oconomowoc, that would not be a positive thing," Sullivan said. "I think there are things the city can do and will do to address that."

Town and city officials are anticipating additional traffic that the new shopping mall, hospital and adjacent development will bring to the area as well as the inevitable need for a greater police presence.

In Summit, Pabst Farms has generally been viwed as a positive for the community, Town Chairman Len Susa said.

"It has highlighted the area. All of a sudden people are noticing us out here," Susa said.