According to the Antigo Journal, the City is planning to buy the Farmer’s Elevator on Irving Street, an empty lot on Irving Street & Superior Street and the old Edison Club building.
The final approval will go to the Antigo Common Council next Wednesday.
You can read the full article from the Journal HERE.
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Tags: city buying properties, city of antigo purchasing properties, edison club antigo wi, farmers elevator antigo wi
I hope this works out for what thier purpose is. I see they are loaning out money to another business called Computer Frontier to get more internet capacity or something. Not sure I am thrilled with the city “helping” all these businesses when it doesn’t provide jobs or anything. At least in the case of the purchases from what I read on the agenda there are definite plans for the properties and purposes for why they are purchasing them so I wll hold onto my opinion until I see what comes about because of the purchase. If a new business or two comes out of it with some jobs for the area people it will definitely be a good move for the city, not to mention make the areas look much better once old buildings are removed. Having more retail shops to spend our wages locally is always a plus and I read that this is the plan here. Hope they pull it off.
I wish they would buy Mike’s Service Center and demolish that, the old SuperAmerica station and demolish that, aw heck-I don’t have enough time to list all the stuff I wish they would demolish. I’m anxious to see what they are doing with the company that supposedly bought the Farmer’s Elevator out and where in the downtown area they are going to put them.
At least it’s a start to clean up this town! ANYTHING being done is surely better than nothing at all.
Yes Sherry, it is a start. Word is the way is paved to start hauling to the demolition landfill so we should start seeing the demo projects of the Fifth Precinct and Koeppel’s Printing go out for bids soon. I am told that the Musolff Building will have to wait another year for demo so they city can get a grant to clean it up. Turns out it is sitting on contaminated soil which is probably why no one wanted to purchase it, because it did not have a clean bill of health. Supposedly the city will be able to get grant funds to clean it up, demo the building and return the site to buildable condition. Now, if only the SuperAmerica station owner would allow something like that to occur we could make a grand statment within three years and have our Superior Street area of the downtown looking vastly improved. It seems banks are willing to drop selling prices to a city entity from what the Mayor was explaining on his interview on Channel 3. I guess if that is the only way to get movement, then we are the city residents are taking the leap to get things moving which is good. I think waiting for owners to make repairs is a moot point, Mike’s Service Center and Strike Zone are good examples of that. I wonder why the old Langlade Laundry is not on the city’s interest list as it looks shabby on the outside as well but maybe it is being cared for on the inside. Anyone out there know anything about it?
The problem with Mikes Service center is zoning. For some reason, who knows why exactly that piece of property on 45 was re-zoned into industrial. Within industrial zoning, trash is not allowed, however ‘Business Refuse’ is. And that is why nothing has been done.
The SA station is a good example of someone from another country coming into our community, running a station, turning a profit (because in their case, their ‘family’ overseas also was their gasoline supplier) and then once they are done, up and leaving – meaning the property will most likely have to sit vacant until the tax bill goes past 3 years in delinquency and the county can take the property back and re-sell it.
I know sometimes there are things that are negative and we all wish the city could fix them all. I, however, applaud the city for the work they have made so far, and I am excited about the future. This city can be whatever you want it to be, all depends on attitude!
Does anyone know if the old musloff building (corner of 6th and superior) that the city wants, stands on contaminated ground? I heard something about that and that soumis didn’t know that the site of an old gas station could possibly be contaminated. But moving past that, I thought that the entity that caused the contamination was responsible for clean up, but maybe there’s a time limit on that.
The entity that caused the contamination would be the old cooperative which used to run the gas station there. They are bankrupt and that is probably one of the key factors. Not sure that the law is as you say about the responsibility being on that of the entity that did it. We have a lot of sites in Antigo which are contaminated and they have not been cleaned up by their owners or the ones after them so I guess we need a legal eagle to get us the answer there. The original ground tests came back negative for contamination but some other samples came back positive is what I heard. Do the gas tanks still exist under the ground? Some have sworn they were removed but I don’t remember ever seeing that happen. If anyone out there can shed a little light, please do. If the tanks are still down there, they could be leaking to cause the contamination. If they have been yanked, it would be interesting to see what type of contamination lies there.
Ad unfortunately at this point in the game, because the city has no stayed on top of it in previous years, it is going to be cheaper and easier for the city to work with the DNR to clean up the contaminated land and prepare if for another use. It would be nice to have policies and procedures in plane and followed on a local level that state once you run a business, such a gas station – you must properly disassemble underground / above ground tanks and certify that you leave no contamination behind. But I am still looking forward to what things will be once these old sites are turned around and cleaned up – ready for development. Everywhere you look in Antigo the City is making headway, location by location.
Apologies for the spelling errors – good example of not proof reading before submitting!