| By Big Radio News Staff |
The city of Janesville appears to be ready to move forward acquiring the blighted former General Motors property.
On Monday, Janesville City Council is slated for a closed-door session to talk over acquiring the 250-acre former GM assembly plant and Jatco sites.
A meeting agenda says the council could take action “concerning property acquisitions and eminent domain within TIF 42 for blight elimination and urban renewal purposes.”
That’s legal speak for a condemnation process the city could use to seize the blighted, contaminated GM site. That would be the next move if the city’s unable to negotiate a sale price with Commercial Development Company.
Private negotiations between an attorney for the Janesville and Commercial Development have rolled out for months. City Manager Kevin Lahner said late last year that there was a significant gap between the city’s purchase offer and Commercial Development’s asking price, although he did not elaborate.
It’s not clear whether the two parties have come closer to an agreement — or if the city’s headed toward condemnation. Commercial Development is now coming up on a statutory deadline to settle with the city on a price.
City spokesman Nick Faust says on Monday, city staff will give the council another overview of where things stand with Commercial Development.
Faust indicated the city probably won’t assume ownership of the property as early as Monday night. But he says city staff and its hired attorneys have reached a stage that requires council direction for the process to move forward.
Faust called the city’s current talks with Commercial Development “dynamic.” He says it’s possible the council could discuss how to deal with an offered sale price from Commercial Development, but there’s also a chance the council could opt to move forward with condemnation.
GM left the site idle in 2009 and permanently closed the plant in 2017 — then sold the plant property and Jatco site to Commercial Development in 2018. Commercial Development spent a few years tearing down and hauling away the massive auto assembly plant buildings, but since 2020, the company has been mostly inactive at the site.
Commercial Development has cleared buildings from the GM property, but otherwise left it idle, with known ground contamination from 100 years of heavy manufacturing. The contamination is capped only by the aging, crumbling pavement and concrete foundations Commercial Development opted to leave on the site.
The city has threatened fines over the past half-decade to get Commercial Development to pay back property taxes, and to try to prompt some movement on the almost 100 acres of leftover concrete slabs and pavement on the plant site.
The city’s rules on property demolition require an owner t0 remove old concrete slabs, but the state Department of Natural Resources says it considers contamination at the GM site to be suitably covered by the concrete, which acts as a cap.
City officials have pointed out that in the 16 years since GM shuttered the Janesville plant, the concrete and asphalt cap on site have gradually crumbled. That’s in part from breakup as trees, bushes and brambles continue to push up through the cap, and wilderness slowly overtakes the site.
Attorneys the city hired last year have been in talks with Commercial Development for months. City staff have been giving the council monthly updates on the progress of the negotiations — but until now, the public has gotten scant information on where negotiations stand.
City Manager Kevin Lahner told Big Radio last fall he thought the city would be ready to move into the acquisition phase by sometime early in 2025. If the city and Commercial Development do not reach an agreement on a sale price, then the city would declare condemnation to acquire the property.
The city aims to acquire the property to eventually clean up soil contamination at the 115-acre GM assembly plant parcel. But first it would launch plans to convert part of the 115-acre, former Jatco haul away yard to park space and residential.
The city’s applied for a $20-million Environmental Protection Agency grant it says would help launch redevelopment of the Jatco site. Faust says the city has not learned whether the EPA grant would be impacted by President Trump’s recent edict to freeze or cut federal grant programs.
That Jatco site has significantly less environmental contamination compared to the 115-acre, main assembly plant site, although the city has a vision for cleanup and redevelopment of the main GM site.
That could take years, and city officials say it could cost tens of millions of dollars to remove concrete on the main site and clean up the lingering heavy metal and petrochemical contamination underneath.
