GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Downtown Green Bay’s coal piles are at risk of staying put after a vote from the Brown County Board of Supervisors late Wednesday night.
The board voted 22 to 2 on a plan to move the coal piles two miles north to the mouth of the Fox River. However, the board’s plan doesn’t include the same terms the coal piles’ owner had agreed to.
The coal piles have sat on the prime downtown Green Bay riverfront property for 124 years. It appears that won’t be changing based off what the coal piles’ owner told Brown County’s board of supervisors before the vote was taken to change the terms.
“Ultimately if the lease terms we negotiated are not approved, C. Reiss will continue to profitably operate from its Mason Street location,” said Keith Haselhoff, the CEO of C. Reiss, the company that owns the coal piles. “To the extent there are last minute changes to the terms of this deal tonight, we would consider that a rejection of the agreement we negotiated in good faith with the county administration over the past year.”
The board made changes to the deal after discussing it behind closed doors for more than two hours.
Compared to the deal C. Reiss had agreed to, the board’s changes include dropping the lease length from up to 75 years to up to 40 years. The annual rent payment escalator was altered from 2.5% to what is greater between 2.5% and the Consumer Price Index. The location of where the coal piles would be moved to also changed from a 14.5-acre parcel in the middle of the former Pulliam Power Plant site to the most northern parcel, which would be 17.5 acres.
The county board also added clauses for air and water compliance reports, that no bulk commodity storage can happen at the current coal piles site unless it is enclosed, and a deal must first be reached with the City of Green Bay on how the current coal piles site will be used in the future.
“When we went through it, the changes that we made were not that drastic,” said Patrick Buckley, chair of the Brown County Board of Supervisors. “We feel it’s very favorable to C. Reiss Coal and don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t take it.”
C. Reiss left the meeting without taking FOX 11’s questions. Instead, it provided a statement.
This evening, the Brown County Board of Supervisors rejected the agreement negotiated and agreed to in good faith by the County Administration and The C. Reiss Company over the past year. We respect the Board’s decision and will continue to be a good neighbor in this community, as we have been since opening our Green Bay location at Mason Street in 1900.
From the start, C. Reiss made clear we would commit to being part of this project, but we also need to be good stewards of our company and the future of our business in Green Bay. After offering several different options over the past year to achieve this objective – including a $3.5 million offer to purchase and move the coal piles to the Pulliam site – the County Board rejected the deal terms agreed to by the County Administration and C. Reiss.
Since we were approached by the County and City more than two years ago to work on this effort, C. Reiss has been fully engaged with the key stakeholders involved – including Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach, and their teams. We thank them for their hard work on this over the last few years, and look forward to continuing to work with them.
“We could potentially be getting a lot more in a lease payment had we put it out for RFI (request for information),” said Buckley.
The board’s vote came after 12 people spoke in public comment in support of moving the coal piles under the terms C. Reiss had agreed to.
“The city of Green Bay had done some modeling on this site many years ago and we showed that $150 million of new development could occur on this site,” said Brian Johnson, Green Bay’s city council president. “That is taxable base from which the county benefits.”
No one from the public spoke against moving the coal piles.
Moving the coal piles is part of a broader port expansion project that has garnered $31 million in federal and state grants. $25 million of that could be at risk of being lost if the coal piles are not moved.
Dave Kaster and Andy Nicholson are the supervisors who voted against the revised deal.
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