Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Hello and welcome to the Community Development Committee for the City of Appleton on this Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Now for the Pledge of Allegiance. Next, we will have a roll call of membership, starting from my far left.

Brad Meltzer, District 2.

Adrian Stancil-Martin, District 11.

Faya Jones, District 10.

Josh Lambrick, District 1. Martin Smith, District 4.

And let the record show, we are all in attendance and happy to be here. We do have two minutes that we need to approve. So the first one is minutes from our May 27th meeting, 260868. Can I get a motion?

Move to approve.

Second. Are there any corrections, changes, questions? All right. With that, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions? The chair abstains. That is 4-0-1.

Seconder would have been Alder Meltzer, I think, was loudest. It was the same time.

We are working with a new system, so we will be patient. Next, we have the minutes of our meeting from July 8, 2026. That is number 261153. Do we have a motion? Move to approve. Second. Alder Stancil-Martin and Alder Meltzer, I heard louder, is the second. All right. Any corrections? Any corrections? Feedback? All right. Let's go ahead and vote all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That passes 5-0. We have no public hearings or appearances scheduled for this evening, so we will move on to our action items. First is auction item number 261154. Request to approve the counteroffer to purchase from F Street Appleton 6 LLC for lot 2 of CSM 4045, tax ID number 31-9-5712-00, located at the southwest corner of East Vantage Drive and South Eisenhower Drive in South Point Commerce Park, plat number 3, at a purchase price of $611,890, otherwise a $43,000 an acre. Do I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. All right, Lambrecht and Aldersmith. Okay.

Director or district?

All right. Specialist Lina, would you go ahead and share with us your information?

Thank you, and good job with the pronunciation. Before you today is an offer to purchase and counteroffer for property within South Point Commerce Park. It is 14.23 acres in size. The offer to purchase comes from an entity of F Street, which is the developer who's already done the buildings in the surrounding area. They're looking to continue that development, and they'd like to do another building very similar to what is already there. They are offering to purchase the property at the advertised price of $43,000 an acre. And staff that did include in the counter offer language to include a deed restriction to not allow a data center in this in this building Any questions of me any questions?

Alder person hearts. I'm you are district 13. Let me turn that on go ahead Thank you chair.

I am curious as to the impetus behind the counteroffer, including the verbiage, not including a data center. I know that we have in process a resolution that is talking about a moratorium on data centers, et cetera, but I'm curious as to why this came about. In general, I'm in agreement. I mean, if both parties are in agreement, I'm in agreement as a council member if this goes through committee. But I am curious as to why it came up and whether this is something that we're regularly going to do moving forward as a city or if this was just something in this particular instance.

Specialist Lina, are you able to answer that?

Sure. I'll start out and then Kara can add on anything that I miss. So the language included in the counter regarding the data center was really because we knew that the resolution was going to be coming forward. So we just wanted to be respectful of that and ensure that that was not the intended use of the proposed building from F Street.

So your question on is this going to be the strategy we use forever? We need to let the data center moratorium process play out We'll have a draft ordinance going to plan commission at the second meeting in September. And then we have at least 12 months and potentially up to 18 months to draft the ordinance changes to the zoning code that ultimately council would need to approve, amend, or deny. SO THAT WILL GIVE US GREATER CLARITY AS WE WORK THROUGH THAT AMENDMENT PROCESS AS TO WHAT THE POLICY PREFERENCES ARE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL IN TERMS OF USING ZONING TO REGULATE AI DATA CENTERS. HOWEVER, RIGHT NOW, OUR TOOLS TO REGULATE ARE LIMITED. THEY ARE NOT PROHIBITED IN CERTAIN ZONING DESIGNATIONS, PRIMARILY OUR INDUSTRIAL ZONES. So if the city wishes between now and when, if and when we may have code changes to have some control over where or when they can be placed, the tool in this case is, this is land we own. The way to prevent it is to place a deed restriction. And in this case, the buyer was amenable to that.

Follow-up? Yes, please, Chair. I understand that whole policy. I understand where we're going with this. I understand that There's a lot of things in process, and I'm going to hear it this time. But I'm a little bit concerned about jumping ahead as a city and immediately asking to disallow that. Again, in this case, since it was agreed to, I'm amenable to it. But I am very concerned about, again, jumping ahead before we actually have policy in place that says that we should not. And there's this nebulous discussion descriptor called a large data center. Well, what does that mean? We haven't described that yet. So again, putting these things on purchase orders, or not purchase orders, but purchase offers, or offers to purchase and counter offers, makes me a little nervous as a preemptive step from the city, from the city's perspective. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other follow-up? Alder Meltzer.

Thank you. I guess from my perspective, if the moratorium does pass, if ordinances do come forward, we end up with somebody purchasing and they don't have a chance to start constructing yet, and then our ordinances have changed, I think that that could cause a lot of divisiveness and a lot of community opposition to something that had already been approved by council. So I think as far as that's concerned, This is a much safer route to be going so that we don't end up down the road with situations where the community doesn't want something, or a council has spoken, yet something is still going forward. And I think that could create a lot of controversy that would be very harmful to our community. So I think that this is a much safer way to proceed, given that we don't know the outcome of the legislative process yet.

Any other further questions?

Thank you. So by agreeing to this, they're basically saying we don't have plans for using this as a data center, so they don't mind agreeing to this. What they're going to do with it, they can do what they want in all these areas, but that's off the table as far as they're concerned.

Correct. They had no concerns whatsoever regarding the data center stipulation.

All right, let us go ahead and vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions? That passes 5-0. And then, Attorney Glad, this next item, if we do not feel we need to go into closed session.

All right.

Does anyone feel the need to go? No, because we passed it.

All right, wonderful.

Now on to our information items. Item number 261156, inspection division permit summary report ending 7-31-26.

All right.

Director Holman.

Similar report to last month, which was the June report. Number of permits and estimated cost does lag behind last year. However, when you take a look at our mid-year report, which is the next item, You'll see we've done a ton of work in terms of bringing new residential lots on board through the subdivision approval and then construction process. My assessment is that the number of permits in terms of new homes Greenfield development in particular isn't lagging because there isn't demand there It's just we're going through the process of bringing infrastructure and lots online So I'm hopeful now that Mission Ridge and first phase of Comet Ridge are going to be reaching a point where their lots can be Sold and issued building permits will start to see that activity pop back up revenues however are looking decent in terms of permit revenue and However, I am keeping an eye on the cost because that ties into net new construction. Keep in mind, all it takes is one huge commercial project to turn current estimated cost of new buildings from $89 million to $160. It could just take one big project, and we are anticipating the Thriven headquarters to pull a permit this fall.

Any thoughts or questions? All right, we can move on to our next information item, 261157, Community Development Department Mid-Year 2026 Budget Report. Director Holman, is that you again? Entertain us.

Sure. Sorry. Kind of talked a little bit about it during my inspections permit summary report. On the planning end, a lot of the work has been on the short-range or land entitlement end, bringing major developments such as Thrivent and then Mission Ridge, Comet Ridge, and Glenmore subdivisions through the approval process and working in partnership with Public Works on infrastructure development. Also working very deeply on the Tyler Munis Enterprise Permitting and Licensing System. The silver lining of having some permits be a little bit behind, it means that our inspectors can spend a ton of time on Tyler EPL. So far, everything's going really well, and we believe we're on track to launch in January as planned. So, so far, so good on that. Planners also are working to implement the comprehensive plan through code revision. So, if you've been following plan commission, we had a whole bundle of proposed code revisions that were reviewed by plan commission, and EITHER ARE OR WILL BE GOING OUT FOR PUBLIC HEARING SHORTLY IN TERMS OF POSTING THE NOTICE IN THE PAPER, AND THAT WILL GET TO FUTURE PLAN COMMISSION AND COUNCIL. Community and Economic Development has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work in terms of negotiating development agreements for the Transit Center in partnership with the Attorney's Office and Ron's team. Also working deeply on putting out a new RFP for the Blue Ramp site, which we're currently finalizing negotiations with potential development partner, and then really ramping up under Steph's leadership marketing and sales activity for South Point. So I think the fact that we brought one of the big parcels with an accepted offer to purchase today is a testament to Steph's great work. If any of you have any other questions on the other items and planning, I'm not going to go over them one by one. GIS continues to modernize and work deeply with the IT team on data conversion and getting all the information we need into Tyler Munis. And the city assessors are gearing up and hitting it hard in preparation for the 2028 revaluation. So mark that date down, Alders, if you weren't here for the last one.

Your team did a very good job with the organization.

They did a fantastic job. And under Matt Tuck's leadership, I anticipate this will go just as smooth, if not smoother. However, revaluation is still a massive undertaking and a big change for a community. So just be aware that's in the works. And then inspections, again, working through their permits and very, very, very deep into Tyler Muniz. In terms of budget, year to date, we're not past 50% on any of our line items. For the ones that we're lagging a little bit behind half, it's primarily because of staff vacancies. So under administration, we have support staff and customer service where we had some turnover, as well as building inspectors that have moved on, and then we've hired new people. So that's why we're off a little bit. Happy to answer any questions. Any committee?

All right, Alderperson Hartzheim. Thank you, Chair.

May I direct you, Director Holman?

Absolutely. Thank you. On page five of this report, Housing units rehabilitated has taken a nosedive. Can you or any of your staff here speak to that? I thought we had something going on with that.

So it's actually, it's not a nosedive. And Dave, if I get anything wrong, let me know. This is 2026 through mid-year. There was a lag in HUD providing our CDBG allocation. Usually we get our grant paperwork mid-year the year prior, and then we can start lining up the projects for the next year. I believe we were delayed in getting our contract from HUD by five to six months, which meant we couldn't secure contracts with homeowners that were HUD-funded on the pace that we normally did. So, Dave, I'm gonna turn over to you, because I know you are deeply involved with Laura, our housing coordinator, we're going to be fine once everything shakes out.

Thank you. And Director Holman did a very nice job capturing some of the challenges that we've encountered with regard to delays from HUD, but would really just emphasize the point that the way it's displayed in this particular chart It's showing everything else after an entire year and showing 2026 only through June of this year, despite the lags with contract work with HUD. THE BULK OF THE HOUSING REHAB CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY HAPPENS OVER THE SUMMER MONTHS AND INTO THE FALL. SO I'M CONFIDENT THAT WE'LL BE AT OR CLOSE TO OUR TYPICAL FULL YEAR AVERAGE BY THE TIME 2026 IS COMPLETED. IT'S JUST A PRODUCT OF THE LAG FROM HUD AND ONLY TRACKING THROUGH JUNE 30TH WHERE A LOT OF ACTIVITIES HAPPENED OVER THE PAST TWO-PLUS MONTHS. and will continue to happen through the bulk of the construction season, which, you know, call it through Thanksgiving or so.

Thank you. That's good to know.

Just a similar observation with regards to new housing units. And I know that you highlighted several new developments that are just coming online. I'm wondering if you maybe have a sense or forecast of where we might land compared to some of the previous years, knowing that we had such a really strong year in 2014. And so just kind of curious where you think we might end up.

Did you mean 2024? That's what I meant. 2024 was... very strong in housing units. In addition to the single family homes that were brought online, I believe some of those permits were related to the Chris Hartwig properties that had been sitting empty since the 1990s, finally being sold to builders. We also had two major housing projects driven by Lawrence University, one in Fox Commons and then one above the Trout Museum. For 2026, 32 is not where I'd like to see it. It's because we're running out of buildable single-family lots. However, if you take a look at the mid-year report, you'll see the number of lots that are being brought online by Mission Ridge, by Comet Ridge, and Granite Comet Ridge is phase one, and then the other developments that we're working are working their way through the construction process. And we also have Thrivent bringing infrastructure. Oh, sorry. Our online phone system follows me to meetings. Oh, shoot, I just picked it up. No, I just hung up on somebody. I've never had that happen in a meeting. Sorry about that. If we can get... I think Mission Ridge is getting closer, and then Comet Ridge is to the point where the proof roll is happening for the concrete streets, and then the city engineer makes a determination, yep, we're ready to issue building permits. Those two subdivisions alone, if the builders are coming in and pulling out dozens of permits at a time, I'm hopeful by the end of the year that single-family home construction is really going to shoot up. It doesn't mean the units will be done, but that will have permits issued.

Thank you.

Yep. Other questions?

All right, folks. You know what time it is. Can I get a motion on the adjournment? Move to adjourn.

Second.

All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Passes 5-0. We are adjourned. Thank you.