City of Janesville in ‘holding pattern’ on timing, funding for Woodman’s Center
BY NEIL JOHNSON, WCLO RADIO
City of Janesville officials still don’t know much about where the city stands on a funding gap, and what impacts it could have on the timing for the proposed Woodman’s Sports and Convention Center.
It’s not clear if the project could face delays, but city of Janesville spokesman and Assistant to the City Manager Nick Faust said last week that the city now is in a “holding pattern” on the Woodman’s Center project while it waits for word on possible state funding to cover a $15 million budget gap on the project.
That’s as the city moves closer to a mid-August time frame when officials had hoped to put project designs that city Department of Public Works Director Mike Payne, the head of the city’s ad-hoc Woodman’s Center Design Committee, tells WCLO Radio News are “basically ready to go.”
Bids on construction would be the second-to-last step in a public-private planning process that would bring the council to a final decision on the $50-million hockey arena and sports and convention center that’s proposed at the Uptown Janesville mall.
Payne told WCLO on Monday that the city has no definite timeline for when the city might bid out project designs for the Woodman’s Center, although he said it likely could take several weeks for the city to get clarity on how (and whether it could land some of $50 million in state funding Gov. Evers said in July would be available for state building projects.
That would tee the project up for a final, go-ahead council vote on construction sometime in the next month. That would pave the way for the demolition of the former Sears building at the Uptown Janesville mall–work originally charted to start in October. Yet, it’s not clear whether the city would meet the same fall timeline to launch the project.
City Neighborhood and Community Services Director Jennifer Petruzzello said the city has no timeline on when Evers’ new state building grant program could open for applicants, but she said the city “remains optimistic about a $15 million contribution from the State of Wisconsin.”
“We are anxiously awaiting details regarding the process for the city to pursue these funds in support of the Woodman’s Center project,” Petruzzello said, adding that as of now, the governor’s new pot of money is the only new funding the city is now pursuing for the project.
Although private fundraisers for the project say they’ve raised more than $8 million for the project, the city remains $15 million short in public funding for the project.
That’s after Republicans on the state’s Joint Finance Committee earlier this year cut millions of dollars of earmarks by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers from the state’s building budget.
Evers since then has added $50 million back into the building budget, a move that came at budget veto time in July in an attempt to soften the Joint Finance Committee’s cuts to the capital-spending budget.
The money would be geared for proposed projects like the Woodman’s center, but it would come through a grant program funneled through the state’s building commission, State Rep Sue Conley told WCLO in July.
The building commission is split on party lines, with three Democrat lawmakers, and three Republican lawmakers, as members.
The Governor’s veto is written in a way that blocks the Joint Finance Committee from vetting potential recipients of the grant funding. The governor also has peeled away a $4 million cap that the Joint Finance Republicans had placed on state building projects. That might make it more likely that the city of Janesville could see the state’s grant program cover much of the $15 million public gap for the Woodman’s Center—although it’s not clear how many other public or public-private projects could be in line for the pot of funding.
The city doesn’t intend to delve into an analysis of operational costs city taxpayers would pay every year to run the Woodman’s Center until the project passed a final vote, Petruzzello said, although Payne told WCLO Radio that it’s likely the city would work with a third-party contractor to run the sports and convention complex, but no updated cost estimates for operations are now available.
Some city council members have said they’d be leery of supporting the Woodman’s Center project if it reached a final vote without the full construction funding in place—including the $15 million the city continues to pursue. Payne and City Manager Kevin Lahner said on Monday that the city as of now won’t bid out the project until it learns the future of funding requests and whether the city will get use of part of Evers’ budget add-on to bridge the gap.
“We’re still waiting for clarity on how to pursue that (funding). The city doesn’t know how the state intends to disburse those funds. Maybe there isn’t a process. We don’t have any idea. It could be in the form of a grant process, we’re just aren’t sure,” Payne said. “We want to understand that we have funding essentially lined up in order to bid a project. Because if there is a $15 million in the funding, it doesn’t really make to get everyone excited to bid a project, and then go to the council and say, ‘But we still have a $15 million budget gap.”
Payne told WCLO it’ll take about 4 weeks to bid the project, but he said the wait on whether cover the gap for the Woodman’s Center won’t significantly hinder the project’s first phase–the removal of the former Sears building.
City manager Kevin Lahner said that he believes the mall’s owners RockStep Capital, are moving toward closing on a transfer of the Sears property to the city of Janesville. Lahner said he RockStep continues to hash out parking and line-of-sight negotiations over the Woodman’s Center project with mall tenants Dick’s Sporting Goods and Kohl’s, but he said those talks are nearing completion.
Last year, as the city and consultants wrestled to pare back the projected cost of the Woodman’s Center from about $60 million to $50 million, a few council members–council President Paul Benson included–quietly suggested because of growth in the city’s tax base the last two years, the city could have room to up the ante on borrowing for the Woodman’s Center.
Besides remaining in a sit-and-wait, the city has not signaled what alternate plans it could have on the project if it’s still millions of dollars short on the project.
Tune into WCLO Radio News for a broadcast of this story.
