Green Bay City Council Moving Ahead With $15M Mixed-Use Sports Facility

The Green Bay City Council has given the green light to help finance a $15 million redevelopment project along the Fox River on the city’s west side.

The city council voted 8-3 Tuesday to go ahead with a mixed-use baseball stadium project, which the city will kick in $13.5 million for.

The 14-acre development is being called the Shipyard, and when construction is complete in 2019 it will be home to a baseball field for the Green Bay Bullfrogs, a Northwoods League team. The facility will also accommodate high school football and soccer.

The site is located on the west bank of the Fox River along South Broadway, an area that some consider blighted.

City of Green Bay Development Director Kevin Vonck said the city has a 20-year lease agreement with the Bullfrogs’ owner, Big Top Baseball. The team currently uses a high school baseball field on the city’s east side but was looking to build a new facility to increase its presence and have a permanent home.

For the new facility, Big Top Baseball will pay the city $225,000 a year, as well as one time payments of $500,000 for a maintenance fund, and $1 million into design plans for the stadium, Vonck said.

The city already owns most of the land for the project, but will have to borrow up to $12 million using TIF funding, to bring it to fruition, Vonck said.

“This will not have an impact on our tax levy,” Vonck said, meaning property tax bills won’t go up as a result of the agreement. “It will be incremental property taxes from the development, from the new projects that are happening in that area.”

Opponents of the facility, including alderman John Vander Leest, worry about taxpayers’ liability should the lease with the Bullfrogs fail. There is also concern over environmental cleanup costs that haven’t been taken into consideration.

One company, Breakthrough Fuels, has already announced it will build its corporate headquarters adjacent to the Shipyard.

Craig Dickman, chairman and CEO of Breakthrough Fuels, wrote a letter to the city saying he believed, “this facility, along with the waterfront improvements, will catalyze development along South Broadway, bringing much-needed housing, dining and entertainment options to the neighborhood.”

Besides the sports facility, the Shipyard plans include docks along the Fox River and a recreational trail that will be open to the public. The city is also looking for a restaurant to locate there.

The open-air stadium will have seating for 2,500 and a maximum capacity of 8,000 for concerts and other festivals.

The development will have a ripple effect on the surrounding residential neighborhood, Vonck said.

He said $1 million in grants will be available to help homeowners improve their homes, and that his department will be seeking out new state and federal grants to reduce the amount of loans the city will take out.

“We have about six months of work to do in terms of design and construction before we (the city) actually have to borrow the money. So, in that time, that’s where we’ll look to see if we can secure some additional funding, so we won’t have to borrow as much,” Vonck said.

The Shipyard has potential to drastically transform Green Bay’s near west side.

The city council’s approval of the project shows the city is looking to improve the area, said Brian Johnson, executive of On Broadway Inc., which is dedicated to attracting business development.

“We’ve learned a hard lesson from the past where we historically built parking lots and parking garages on the riverfront,” Johnson said. “Now, we’re learning that’s not what people want to see. They want to see amenities. They want to see trails, to be able to put people back on the riverfront where we were kind of born to be.”

Bringing more people to South Broadway doesn’t mean the city is trying to price people out of the area, Vonck said.

“We’re looking to improve a neighborhood and not gentrify it,” Vonck said.

Vonck said there was some confusion about the city coming in and tearing down existing businesses and property, which is not the case. In fact, most of the Shipyard footprint is already vacant.

Groundbreaking is expected to happen in the summer, with an opening sometime in 2019.