| By Big Radio News Staff |
The city of Janesville’s top official says the city could have controlling ownership of the 240-acre former General Motors and Jatco sites sometime early in 2025.
City manager Kevin Lahner tells Big Radio the city is now moving into negotiations in its bid to buy the two vacant, former industrial sites, which the city moved to condemn earlier this year.
“We’ve gone through the first aspects of the condemnation process. We are now moving to the next phase where it is a process of providing offers and entering into negotiations with the property owners,” Lahner said. “That will occur now over the next couple of months.”
He says under state law governing forced sale through condemnation, an official offer of purchase, known as a “jurisdictional offer,” would give the city legal ownership of the two sites.
That would strip the property from Commercial Development Company, a St. Louis brownfield site developer who has owned the GM and Jatco sites since 2018, but has kept both sites barren and inactive since mid-2020.
Lahner says he considers city ownership of the sites now to be inevitable.
“I don’t see a scenario right now where we wouldn’t end up with ownership of the properties,” he said. “I think we’re going through a good process, following the statutes, and we’ll get to the finish line.”
Lahner’s comments came at a public feedback session this week on prospects for redevelopment of the Jatco site.
Lahner was responding to a Big Radio reporter who asked if the city was confident it could land a $20-million EPA grant to build parks and housing on parts of the Jatco site – even though the city does not currently own that land.
The city must apply for the big grant by November. It would be awarded sometime in spring 2025.
The EPA grant’s rules allow the city a three-year-window to get parts of the Jatco redeveloped under plans the city says could bring new condominiums and duplexes, plus park space and wooded trails, to a portion of the site.
Jatco is the father south of the two, 115-acre sites that make up the sprawling, former GM complex.
Lahner says he is confident the city would gain “jurisdictional” ownership of both the GM and Jatco sites before the EPA grant gets awarded next year.
He says jurisdictional ownership gives the city the control to marshal potential reuse plans for the property as it would for any other industrial park site the city owns, and it would make the city eligible for grant funding or other programs and allow the city to offer tax incentives for various redevelopment prospects.
Lahner says that level of control would come to the city even if a fully settled sale price for the two properties takes months to hash out through a court decision –a process that’s sometimes necessary when municipalities force sale through a statutory condemnation process.
The city has spent months with legal consultants calculating what it might offer to negotiate a fair price for the properties, but the city has not yet tipped its hand on the possible price tag for the GM and Jatco sites.
The Janesville City Council would be required to OK spending to buy the land.
Commercial Development Company has cleared the 115-acre, former GM assembly site of buildings but has left it with rubble, leftover asphalt and concrete foundations strewn across much of the site.
The abandoned material is considered a cap that covers known environmental contamination underneath.
Redevelopment of the GM assembly plant could be subject to further cleanup, depending on reuse. Housing, and some types of commercial development, could require significant further cleanup at an owner’s cost.
The Jatco site, on the other hand, saw less intense industrial use; it was where new vehicles made at the GM plant were loaded on trailers and hauled away to market.
The JATCO land has an environmental closure letter from the Department of Natural Resources that indicates it would not be subject to the environmental overhauls the main GM site might need.
City Economic Director Jimsi Kuborn tells Big Radio it’s the first time the EPA has unfurled funding the size and scope of the $20-million grant the city’s now pursuing to spur reuse at the Jatco.
She says the grant’s newness means there’s no precedent on whether the EPA would prefer the city have site ownership before it applies for the grant.
She says the EPA has reviewed the city’s position, which is that that it is actively seeking ownership of the GM and Jatco sites. She says the EPA has encouraged the city to apply for the big grant.
“That’s what we’re doing,” Kuborn told Big Radio. “We’re putting our best foot forward.”
Kuborn says consulting fees for the grant application process and other aspects of planning a prospective re-use would get paid out of the tax-increment financing district the city has established around the former GM and Jatco properties.
