An unlikely nature preserve

Flanked by a swath of concrete on one side and a cement plant on the other, a seven-acre out-lot on the far east side of the Village of Grafton doesn’t look much like a nature preserve.

Yet that is exactly what it was poised to become this week.

The Ozaukee County Board on Wednesday was expected to accept the donation of the land referred to as the Ulao Creek Gateway Property from Patriot Properties — the company that has sold adjacent land for development — and add it to the county parks system.

That would make the land off Gateway Drive — a short street extending north from Highway 60 east of I-43 that provides access to Water Street Brewery and the Hampton Inn and Suites — the first county park in the Village of Grafton.

Restoration work on the property, which because of wetlands cannot be developed, has been ongoing since 2014, but county ownership of the land will preserve in perpetuity a significant stretch of the environmentally important Ulao Creek watershed.

The nature preserve designation is also important because it will provide the first practical public access to the Ulao Creek watershed, a unique environmental corridor that runs from the south end of the City of Port Washington to the Milwaukee River in the Thiensville area.

“We’re hoping this will help us share the Ulao Creek watershed with people,” Andrew Struck, the county’s director of planning and parks, said. 

Under assault from both farming practices and urban development, the Ulao Creek watershed, which in addition to supporting a variety of important habitats is a spawning site for fish, has been the subject of a decadeslong restoration effort led in part by the Ulao Creek Partnership, a grassroots group founded in 1995 by former Ozaukee County and Town of Grafton supervisor Tim Kaul, who died in 2012.

Much of that work, in which the county and other agencies have participated, has gone unnoticed. The nature preserve, Struck said, has the potential to change that.

“By providing access to it, we hope it helps us show people the important of the Ulao Creek watershed and its importance to the Milwaukee River watershed.”

The county plans to develop trails and perhaps a boardwalk on the property within the next few years to provide so-called passive use recreational opportunities.

When the county has hosted environmental programs on the land in the past, the adjacent restaurant and hotel have allowed participants to use their parking lots, Stuck said. The hope is those lots can now be used by nature preserve visitors. If not, there is a corner of the property that could be developed into a parking area, Struck said.

“I’m not expecting large numbers of people here, so hopefully the parking works out,” Struck said. “And actually, we’re fully expecting people who visit the restaurant and stay at the hotel to visit the nature preserve. We hope it strengthens these businesses.”