Town to try negotiating before taking mill property

The Town of Fredonia is in negotiations to purchase the deteriorating Waubeka Mill and Button Factory along the Milwaukee River.

Town Chairman Chris Janik said the town has been talking with the properties’ owners Charles Sheridan and his son.

The goal is to reach a purchase agreement rather than take the properties via eminent domain, which allows governments to take private property for public use as long as owners receive fair market value.

“We’re dealing with outright negotiation, and if this doesn’t happen we’ll move to eminent domain,” Janik said.

The town would then turn the properties over to Ozaukee County, which plans to make them into a park.

Time is a factor. The two sides have to reach an agreement by June 15, or a county grant to reuse the property would have to wait until the next funding cycle. Janik said he is not confident that deadline will be met.

The county late last year was awarded a grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to assess whether the Waubeka Mill and Button Factory are a brownfield site in need of remediation.

The $142,800 grant is dependent on the properties’ owner granting permission to the county and state Department of Natural Resources to access the site, according to a memo to the county Natural Resources Committee.

Last fall, the Town Board authorized Janik to execute an intergovernmental agreement with Ozaukee County so they can work together to demolish the buildings and give the parcels to the county, which likely would turn them into a boat launch and park.

Both the mill and Button Factory buildings are dilapidated, non-conforming structures in a flood hazard zone and don’t meet setback requirements.

Neither has been in use for many years.

They “would not be buildable under any circumstances,” county Planning and Parks Director Andrew Struck said last fall.

Sheridan bought the Button Factory in a 1990 auction from Ozaukee County, and the county might get it back, along with the mill, which Sheridan bought in 2019 for $1,000 and later turned over to his son.

Sheridan has been trying to turn the buildings into a several businesses or residences for the past several years without success.