County board approves selling Lakeland Center

Approving the sale of an unused piece of property took an ugly turn Sept. 22 at the Shawano County Board of Supervisors meeting.

The board approved, by a 21-3 vote, to sell the former Lakeland Center for a minimum of $200,000. Before that, the board voted 18-6 to give Shawano County Economic Progress Inc. a $225,000 loan designated to assist potential buyers.

There is a question whether either of the two offers the county has received will pan out. Newcap Inc. is offering to pay $200,000 for the property, which formerly housed the county’s community service programs, while Cloverleaf Lakes LLC has submitted a $225,000 bid for the building.

Newcap is proposing a health clinic, housing services and prefab housing development in the building, SCEPI economic development officer Peter Thillman said in August. Cloverleaf Lakes, according to County Board Chairman Tom Kautza, would renovate the property and turn it into smaller office spaces to be leased out.

Kautza noted that the property would remain tax-exempt if Newcap purchased the property; however, if Cloverleaf Lakes purchased it, it would go back on the tax rolls and bring the county some additional revenue.

Supervisor Gene Hoppe lashed out at Kautza for allowing a second offer for the building to be considered, insisting that he sought out Newcap when there were no buyers at the time for the property.

“You couldn’t get rid of that building, and you and (Supervisor) Jerry (Erdmann) came up to me and said, ‘Gene, sell that building to Newcap,’” Hoppe said. When Kautza denied he said that, Hoppe replied, “Yes, you did. Don’t lie on it now.”

Kautza pointed out that Newcap has been difficult to reach at times, and as a Sept. 30 deadline approaches, it appears the company might not have all the necessary permits needed. Newcap has to get a conditional use permit through the city for its operation, but the permit requires the approval of the Shawano Plan Commission, which meets Sept. 29 on the issue, and the Shawano Common Council, which won’t meet until Oct. 13.

“The board doesn’t usually work like this,” Kautza said. “I don’t want it to work like this. I wanted to have a signed offer to purchase.”

Kautza added that it took two months to find out how much Newcap wanted to borrow, when it looked like they were going to need a loan from the county through SCEPI. But once officials indicated they would need an additional $500,000, which would include renovating the property, the county balked at the request.

“That was beyond the $200,000 purchase price,” Kautza said. “They wound up getting financing for that and going to another bank. They got the original loan from another bank, also.”

Kautza expressed concern that, if the county waited too long to allow the sale of the Lakeland Center to go through, it could wind up with no potential buyers.

“Then we’re going to stuck with the building into the wintertime,” Kautza said.

Kautza accused Hoppe of low-balling the offer to Newcap, saying he told his colleague that the county would prefer to sell the property at $225,000, but not to go below $200,000.

“And you offered it to them for $200 (thousand) right away,” Kautza said.

Hoppe said the situation has impacted his reputation.

“That makes me a damned liar, and I’m not,” he said. “You got to be honest about the way this was handled. It was rotten. It was bad.”

Kautza replied that, as a representative of the county, he should be happy that there’s a higher bid on the table for the building.

“We took a second offer, Gene, because you legally can,” Kautza said.

When it was announced that there were signed offers from both entities, Supervisor Sandy Steinke insisted she and others on the board should be allowed to see them before voting on the issue.

“We must have the documents somewhere,” Steinke said. “The first and the secondary offers, because right now we have neither one.”

There was also a question about whether the loan money would even be needed, as Kautza indicated both entities could pay cash for the property. So the board amended the loan resolution to have the money, which is coming out of the American Rescue Act funding the county has received, returned to the county if no one utilizes it by Dec. 1.

The final approval of the sale to one company or the other will fall to the county’s executive committee. That, along with the loan to SCEPI with no guarantee it would be utilized, prompted Supervisor Aaron Damrau to vote against both the sale and the loan.

“How can the county board make an informed decision on how this is going to play out if we’re just going to hand it off to the executive committee?” Damrau said.

Kautza lashed out at the naysayers, saying it didn’t matter to him whether the building sold. But with the county having to tighten its financial belt, things needed to be done to reduce its costs.

“I really don’t care,” Kautza said. “If you don’t want to sell the building, let it rot. I’m just trying to make it work within all the rules we have to go by.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com