Developer Welfare: Watch Your Wallet, Shorewood is Lining the Pockets of Property Developers at Your Expense

As we have discussed in other posts, the City of Shorewood is bending over backwards to support developers. One developer trick is to break big projects into several small ones - big developments have much larger impacts on neighbors and as a result have more expensive requirements to avoid problems like flooding. But developers really don't want to pay for those expensive requirements - every dollar they spend on flood prevention is a dollar they don't spend flying to Tahiti. Fortunately for their tan and golf game, the Shorewood Planning Department is very happy to go along with the fiction that a big project is several little ones to let developers make more money by skating the rules. Unfortunately for neighbors (and the rest of us as you'll see below), Mother Nature won't. Too much water is too much water.

Mother Nature doesn't care about your rules

Someone has to pay to make these big developments safe for neighbors. If it's not the developer that profits, then who? You know the answer because it's a game we've seen before - the city has to come in after the fact and fix the problems that they let the developer create. One case in point is the Strawberry Lane flood project that resulted from too much development without proper planning. According to our friends at Google:

The total estimated cost for the Strawberry Lane project in Shorewood, which includes the holding pond and related infrastructure (design, land acquisition, construction, inspections) through August 2024, is $5.81 million. The project, part of a larger 2023 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) of $6.2 million, is funded by street/utility bonds and city utility funds. The project includes the improvement of drainage and infrastructure, likely impacting areas near Strawberry Lane.

The current developer welfare program is the Watten Ponds project. The city won't tell you this, but when they approve the Watten Ponds project, they're approving a tax for you - they're writing a check from you that you won't know about until the development is finished, the environmental impacts start and it's too late to do anything about it.

"This project will be different!" Planning Department

You might say, we'll just oppose the tax later. But by then, the developers will have complied with the inadequate requirements the city pushed through, and they won't pay a penny more. But not building the environmental protections isn't an option, you might change how you pay for it, whether through a levy, or higher utility expenses, or by having money taken from other things. But you'll pay for it. Making developers pay their full due now is the only chance, but the city won't do that unless we make them.

Other people's money.

Why is the city so focused on supporting developments no matter what? That's a great question. The answer in part is that the people making the decisions in the Planning Department aren't Shorewood residents and they won't pay the cost they're signing you up for. And decisions are driven by consultants who get lavishly paid to find expensive projects for the city.

The city will tell you they have to approve the current project or the developer will sue. Maybe, but one thing you know for sure is that the cost of that lawsuit will be a lot less than the cost of the improvements the city will make you pay for later.

It'd be nice to think it's just this one little area, but the truth is Watten Ponds is just the first step, the city plans for the development of all open and vacant land in the city (email us if you don't believe it). The environmental impacts will be huge, and the city is happy to sign you up for these costs. How many Strawberry Lanes will there be? Watch your wallet.

What Can You Do?

By the time the new taxes come, it'll be too late. Your chance to stand up is now. See how.