Settlement could spur development

It clears the way for other Pabst Farms projects, officials say

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 18, 2006

By AMY RINARD
arinard@journalsentinel.com

Oconomowoc - Settlement of the Aurora Health Care lawsuit against the city sets the stage for a rapid pace of development in the Pabst Farms area as the economic growth of the metro area continues its advance to the western edge of Waukesha County, officials said Thursday.

The five-year-old lawsuit had put two Pabst Farms parcels in limbo. Now its settlement could clear the way for the building of both the hospital and a mall and the projects planned around them.

"It's a very attractive area, and it goes back to the old real estate adage of location, location, location," said Matt Moroney, executive director of the Metropolitan Builders Association of Greater Milwaukee.

"That area has a lot going for it in terms of transportation access, schools and overall quality of life."

The 1,500-acre Pabst Farms development straddles the interstate at Highway 67. When it is fully developed, it will include homes as well as retail, office and industrial areas.

Aurora sued the City of Oconomowoc in 2001 after its parcel in one portion of Pabst Farms was rezoned to prevent construction of a hospital. Over the course of the lawsuit, both Aurora and Pabst Farms turned their attention to another Pabst Farms parcel in Summit as the preferred hospital location.

With the terms of the lawsuit settlement paving the way for the Summit hospital, a health and wellness campus is also now expected to spring up south of I-94 in Summit.

That planned complex of medical offices and clinics is to be anchored by the new Aurora hospital and clinic on another site Aurora has controlled for years at the southeast corner of the Highway 67 interchange in Summit.

The settlement also now frees up Aurora's original proposed hospital site in Oconomowoc for a 1 million-square-foot open air shopping mall proposed by General Growth Properties, one of the nation's leading developers of retail malls. The 121-acre Pabst Farms mall is to include a major department store, upscale shops, a multiscreen theater and restaurants.

Peter Paul Bell, president of Pabst Farms Development, said the lawsuit settlement, which finally provides certainty about two key parcels of land, is a big step forward for Pabst Farms.

"This is going to open a lot of great opportunities for Pabst Farms, for the City of Oconomowoc and the Town of Summit," he said.

"Solving these two things is a big help for us to reach out on a national level to other prospective tenants. This allows us to take Pabst Farms to the next level."

The Pabst Farms project was announced with considerable fanfare about six years ago, but much of the sprawling development remains farm fields and open land, including the two parcels controlled by Aurora - 55 acres south of the interstate and 43 acres to the north.

Aside from new upscale homes, most of the development at Pabst Farms, so far, has involved the relocation of existing city businesses, including a grocery store, bank and the local YMCA, and a new elementary school, which replaced one just down the road.

Mayor Maury Sullivan said Thursday that settlement of the lawsuit will have a "synergistic effect" on development at Pabst Farms and surrounding areas. As people start to see bulldozers out in the fields and buildings going up, he said, it will give the whole area a new energy that will attract more growth.

"There was a legal block as well as a mental block," he said, of the local perception of the Pabst Farms development.

"With the relinquishing of that (original Aurora) site, it's more than a new availability of land, although it certainly is that. It's a kind of psychological freeing up of the mind as well.

"It breathes new life into something that was pretty lifeless."