Two-year delay due to state funding
By Angie Landsverk
The reconstruction and redevelopment of Waupaca’s Main Street is now scheduled to begin in 2021.
The city expected the project to begin in 2019.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) pushed the project back to 2021 due to budgetary funding for the program, according to Brennan Kane, the city’s director of community and economic development.
He presented an update about the project during the common council’s March 21 meeting.
“Due to an unrealistic timeline originally granted to the city, our project has been pushed by the DOT to provide ample time for the city to complete the Downtown Masterplan and begin design of the project,” Kane wrote in a memo to Mayor Brian Smith and the common council.
Designing the project is anticipated to take two years to complete, he said.
Kane said the city still has about $1.7 million in federal funding for the project.
The funding the city qualified for is through the Surface Transportation Urban Program, which the DOT manages.
Main Street is to be reconstructed from Badger to Water streets.
The city sought design exceptions to maintain as much front-in angle parking as possible.
The hybrid parking design being recommended for downtown keeps front-in angle parking on Main Street, with the exception of the east side of the street, from Badger to Union streets.
Parallel parking is being recommended for that side of the block.
Kane told the council the city is “hearing good things” regarding the design exceptions it submitted.
The application for those exceptions was forwarded to the DOT’s regional office for review.
“In discussion with the DOT’s regional consulting firm, they are in agreement with our design request and support the preferred alternative as presented,” Kane wrote in his memo to the mayor and the council.
The city’s consultants will be in Waupaca April 24-26 and will present the draft plan for downtown’s redevelopment during several open houses for the public.
The common council will also have a project workshop with the consultants on Tuesday, April 25, as well as a budgetary session.
Kane said a three-year outlook will be presented that evening.
It will include the schedule of projects for the city’s downtown and their associated costs.
Another microbrewery
Someone wants to turn the former Waupaca Family Center into a microbrewery.
Kane said the proposal for the building at 804 Churchill St. will be on the Wednesday, April 12, agenda of the Plan Commission.
He told the common council there have been a “couple other inquiries on that part of town.”
A microbrewery project is already underway in another part of the city.
Doc Atty’s will be a brewery, distillery and winery at 109 N. Main St., in the former Edgewood Arts building.
The common council approved a developer’s agreement with Doc Atty’s in February, and construction was expected to begin by the end of April.