|By Neil Johnson, Big Radio News |
Janesville City Manager Kevin Lahner says developer Three Leaf Partners has given the city no signal it’s walking away from plans for a huge greenhouse development on the south side.
Lahner says despite Janesville City Council member Heather Miller’s recent public statements to the contrary, the project’s still on — at least as far as the city knows.
Miller told Big Radio last week and again this week that Lahner had informed her recently that greenhouse deal was falling apart over some lending challenges.
Big Radio couldn’t reach Three Leaf for comment, but the company publicly ballyhooed its conceptual plans last year at a set of junkets on the city’s south side. Those open houses showed plans for the huge, 1.57 million-square-foot hydroponic strawberry greenhouse project, but also multiple other, smaller industrial developments spread across the east side of the land.
Three Leaf still has given the city no formal plans for the project since floating the concept and landing a tax-incentive deal last year for the proposal. The city of Janesville under former city manager Mark Freitag trumpeted the prospect of a massive greenhouse in early 2022.
The city’s move to get publicly out front on the prospect came in the months before Freitag took a new job in Colorado that came with a significant pay increase.
The city’s also worked up a tax-increment district agreement approved last year to give Three Leaf an incentive to build the greenhouse operation and set up the land for other industrial uses.
The parcel is zoned agricultural because for years it housed a big part of MacFarlane Pheasants’ bird operations. MacFarlane Pheasants has intended to sell off the whole 175 acres that sits at the northeast corner of Highways 51 and 11. Under current zoning, it could be developed for a greenhouse operation, or in the interim, it could be used for other types of agriculture, such as crop planting.
Officials from McFarlane didn’t immediately return calls from Big Radio.
Lahner says the city’s now working on complicated storm water plans to pave the way for the greenhouse project and other parts of the development. Low-slug parts of the land would need a system of drainage ditches to make any industrial project work.
Lahner says that part of the planning process has involved city staff work. He says it’s complex planning, and because of the lay of that land, anyone trying to develop the former pheasant farm faces challenges laying infrastructure. He says those challenges might be one factor behind any delays in the project.
Jimsi Kuborn, the city’s economic development director, tells Big Radio that she’s heard of no plans by Three Leaf to abandon the greenhouse project.
Lahner says that unlike other tax incentive deals the city has, such as SHINE Technologies’ multi-million dollar deal hatched more than a decade ago, he can’t see the city requiring Three Leaf to give regular public updates of the status of its properties.
Unlike the land the city owned and gave to SHINE years ago to develop as a medical radioisotope production factory, Three Leaf’s development parcels are privately owned.
He says the tax incentive deal the city has hatched with Three Leaf for the development of the former pheasant farm is structured as a “pay-as-you-go” with payouts that’d be tied to the development reaching key milestones.
Because the city doesn’t have formal development plans from Three Leaf, Lahner says, it means the city hasn’t disbursed any tax incentive money for the project.
Miller says she doesn’t believe she misconstrued Lahner’s earlier statements to her. She says at the time, she told Lahner that if any deal is falling through at the property, she and most south side residents would assume the land would be marketed for other uses.
Lahner says Three Leaf is marketing parts of the land it now owns for other industrial uses that could include “build-to-suit” projects that would be leased back by future industrial users.
That’s a common development method the city’s been involved in with various warehousing projects the private sector’s brought here.
For more on this story, tune into WCLO Radio and WCLO.com.
