No rezoning support for Riverside Dr. plan

The Village of Saukville Plan Commission on Tuesday recommended not rezoning 9.6 acres on North Riverside Drive from business to residential after both the village police and fire departments said they could not provide emergency services to the site whenever that area floods.

Instead, commission members told the developer that it would make sense to wait until a plan by Ozaukee County to rebuild a portion of the road to prevent it being flooded becomes clearer.

Luke Check owns a 40.6-acre property that is currently zoned for retail shopping and wants to rezone 9.6 acres to build single-family homes.

Access to the development, which lies in a flood plain, would be by a private road.

Both the fire and police departments said last year that they lacked equipment to access the property during a 100-year flood event.

The property could be lifted out of the flood plain, officials said, but access would still be problematic because Riverside Drive, also known as Highway W, regularly floods. 

“It’s underwater almost every year,” Trustee Jim Nowlen said.

Details of the proposed development have not yet been submitted.

Ozaukee County officials recently announced the state awarded the county $1 million to reconstruct Highway W from Green Bay Avenue in the village to Mink Ranch Road in the Town of Saukville.

Construction likely won’t occur until 2023 and would take two years to complete. Environmental analyses need to be completed and real estate acquired for the upgrades to be done, officials said.

Commission members did not comment on the merits of the proposed development but suggested the developer should wait for the highway project to advance.

“It doesn’t make sense to me to do anything at this time until we have a better idea of what the county has planned,” Village President Barb Dickmann said.