Grant to cover extra trail cost caused by data center

The Ozaukee Interurban Trail will not have to be rerouted on Port Washington’s north side to accommodate the Vantage Data Center’s campus and increased costs to repave the trail will be covered by a new state grant, county officials were told last week.

The cost to repave the 13 miles of trail from Port to Belgium will basically double but be covered by a $710,000 grant from a state Department of Administration that supervisors on the Natural Resources Committee voted to apply for last week.

The repaving project was approved and ready to begin when the City of Port Washington announced it was annexing the  data center property.

That put the repaving on hold, driving up costs. 

Plus a We Energies substation and overhead power lines also will increase costs for the project.

“This utility work will include overhead and underground utility line construction completed with heavy equipment along and across several portions of (the trail)”, Struck said in a memo to the committee.

That includes “significant coordination” with Union Pacific to reroute a portion of the trail in Belgium where the railroad said it encroached on the its right of way south of Highway D and adjacent to the We Energies substation north of Highway D. 

The county has since worked with the Village of Belgium and the Belgium Fire Department to shift the trail east on the south side of Highway D, follow Highway D and Elm Street as an on-road signed and painted segment, and then reconnect to the existing trail north of the We Energies substation.

“The village and fire department have been great to worth with,” Struck said.

The grant also will pay for new signage along the trail.

Matching funds for the DOA grant will come from a $710,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation grant that was expected to fund the entire trail repaving. 

The DOA grant is part of a $50 million fund created in 2023 to support local infrastructure improvements and community development projects across the state.

Struck also told supervisors that the trail will not have to be rerouted off Highland Drive at the south end of the data center campus as was feared.

Discussions on where the trail would go included building a bridge across I-43.

“It doesn’t look like Vantage will have to take out the bike trail,” Struck said.

Bike travel in that area is currently disrupted by the installation of water and sewer lines being extended north across Highway LL.

Struck also told supervisors that Vantage claims that bike trails within the data center campus will connect with the Interurban Trail are premature.

That’s because a private trail that connects to the public trail is required to allow traffic to flow both ways, meaning the entrance to the campus must be open to the public.

“It has to flow both ways. It has to be public,” he said.

He said it has been an issue in other places where closed housing development have tried to connect to the Interurban Trail.