Bulldozing Residents and Trees

Watten Ponds: How Shorewood Tried to Slip a Bad Development Through While No One Was Looking

Watten Ponds is approximately eight acres of wooded wetland in the City of Shorewood found in the Maple View Court neighborhood. It contains at least five natural wetland areas and old growth forest, making it one of the last intact wooded wetland ecosystems left in the city. For decades, residents were told - clearly and repeatedly - that this land could not be developed because of its environmental sensitivity.

Now, without meaningful public engagement and through a deeply flawed process, the City of Shorewood is attempting to reverse that position.

The pristine beauty of Watten Ponds.

ELIMINATION OF ONE OF THE LAST OLD GROWTH FORESTS IN SHOREWOOD

The City is considering approval of a subdivision that would open roughly four acres of Watten Ponds to development, allowing the construction of two large homes. To do so, the project would remove nearly 100 old growth trees and hundreds of younger trees. The developer proposes to “mitigate” this loss by planting eight new trees. Eight.

In addition to the destruction of irreplaceable tree cover, the project would degrade multiple wetlands on site and downstream wetlands into which they flow. These are permanent changes. Once wetlands are altered and trees are cut, there is no restoration plan that brings them back.

As serious as the environmental harm is, what should alarm every Shorewood resident is how the City has handled the process.

BIAS TOWARD DEVELOPERS

As we describe in Is the Planning Department in Cahoots With Developers, internal city emails show that the city's Planning Department seems to view themselves as allies and advocates of developers, strategizing with them and working with them to push developments through over the objections of residents.

INCOMPLETE AND INACCURATE NOTICE PROVIDED ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

Public notice for this project was mailed and published in the Sun Sailor on December 25, 2025—Christmas Day. A public notice packet containing a cover letter and incorrect materials was provided to residents in this neighborhood on or around this date. It is difficult to imagine the timing of this public notice wasn’t a purposeful attempt to keep residents in the dark.  The City had to know that families would be traveling, offices are closed, and few people are scrutinizing legal notices. While technically permissible, issuing notice during a major holiday ensured fewer residents were paying attention.

Worse, the notice packet included application materials that were wrong. The survey provided to resident, and relied upon by the City, contained an incorrect scale, later confirmed by the City’s own engineer. That survey was not incidental. It was foundational to understanding lot size, setbacks, wetlands, access, and the scope of impact.

Residents were asked to comment on a project using false information.

When residents raised these concerns, they expected the City to correct the errors and reissue notice. Instead, they were that the City did not have to provide any information at all, and it did not matter that the information was incorrect - the City told residents that updated notice could not be provided.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING – A FALSE NARRATIVE FOR A QUICK APPROVAL

During a meeting with several concerned residents on January 6, 2026 , Shorewood Planning Director Jake Griffiths informed residents that the City could not reissue corrected notice because the 120-day statutory clock was already running. He suggested that if notice were reissued, the clock would expire and the City Council would be forced to approve the subdivision as it exists even if required conditions had not been met and without further discussion.

Residents were effectively told that because the City had already started the clock using inaccurate materials, the City was now trapped and that correcting the error would supposedly require approval of a flawed plan by default.

Statutory timelines are meant to protect applicants from unreasonable delay, not to silence residents or shield cities from correcting their own mistakes.

PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING PROVIDED ONE MONTH DEFERRMENT

At the January 7, 2026, Planning Commission meeting, approximately 20 Maple View Court residents attended a three-hour hearing. They raised concerns about inaccurate notice, incorrect maps, wetlands, shoreland overlay issues, unclear setbacks that would place a new home 10 feet form the back yard of a home that has been in the neighborhood for over 26 years, massive tree loss, and unresolved pre-conditions as documented by the City Engineer.

During the meeting, the Planning Director, Jake Griffiths, continually pushed the Commission to advance the application even as residents raised many concerns and had yet to receive complete and accurate information.

Regardless, the Planning Commission in a 2-1 vote, deferred its decision to the next meeting date  on February 3, 2026 allowing additional time for the applicant to gather further information and provide answers.  A final City Council approval is likely to be requested on February 9, 2026.

A BUREAUCRACY OUT OF CONTROL?

The greatest challenge for having meaningful resident input into developments like Watten Ponds is that the Planning Department instructs the Planning Commission and the City Council that the law says that the Planning Commission and City Council cannot consider any factors at all other than the factors under the control of the Planning Department, like setbacks (a legal conclusion that we and others believe is simply wrong, but more on that later). According to the Planning Department, the Planning Commission and City Council are at best a double check on the Planning Department's work and at worst, a rubber stamp to approve Planning Department decisions. We have been asked to turn over the future of Shorewood to unelected young bureaucrats whose agenda we cannot know.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN WATTEN PONDS

If Shorewood can push through a subdivision with inaccurate materials, publish notice on a major holiday, ignore resident concerns, and frame default approval as inevitable, then no neighborhood in this city is safe from the same treatment. We are aware of other  developments or city projects in Shorewood falsely promising tree preservation and we do not want our neighborhood to come to the same fate.  Once the trees are gone and wetlands are damaged, there is no undo button.

WHAT CAN I DO?

If you'd like to help take back control over the future of Shorewood, reach out to the City Council and urge them to reject the Watten Ponds development and to require the Planning Department to provide a fair review. See our How to Help page for more information.