By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer
ASHWAUBENON – The village board agreed Tuesday, May 28, to change the height limitation for the proposed office building in the Titletown District to add a fifth floor.
Originally approved last December in the planned unit development (PUD) overlay zoning district for a maximum height of 90 feet, the board backed amendments for the Phase II development, which, in addition to favoring a change from four to five stories, would allow the office building to increase the leasable square footage from 130,000 to 149,000 and the office use from 110,000 to 129,000 square feet.
In addition, to accommodate a fifth floor, the minimum parking requirement has been adjusted increase the total parking from 1,831 to 1,864 spaces.
The proposed office building received conditional approval for a fifth floor from the village’s Site Plan Review Committee, prior to the PUD amendment receiving the backing from the Plan Commission and village board.
Community Development Director Aaron Schuette said the additional height also has to be approved by Austin Straubel International Airport.
Townhouses Plat
In other action, the board backed a final plat to combine 17 parcels into five larger parcels to facilitate the development of townhouses along Brookwood Drive as part of the Titletown Phase II PUD.
Schuette said the combination of lots is necessary to avoid the townhomes being located on an existing parcel line and thereby creating building code complications.
The Site Plan Review Committee backed a site plan in March for building townhomes located on the north and south sides of Brookwood Drive, generally east of Orrie Lane.
The development plans call for a total of 54 units of single-family attached residential units with 27 units on each side of Brookwood Drive.
Under that plan, townhouses on the north side would have vehicular entrances fronting on Brookwood, while the townhouses on the south side would have vehicular entrances to the rear of the buildings.
With the townhomes to be available for ownership, Trustee Ken Bukowski questioned whether restrictions could be placed on those homes to prevent them from being available as short-term rentals, which the village has less authority to restrict after a provision was added in the state budget two years ago.
“I hope we’re not closing our door up here in the sense that we won’t have anything to say about this, if we approve these plats,” Bukowski said. “I just think that would be a disaster if that were allowed to happen.”
Village President Mary Kardoskee said the Packers organization has indicated to her it is not for allowing short-term rentals in the townhomes.
Schuette said the intent is for the townhomes to be used as full-time residences, but the process to legally prevent them from being short-term rentals is still being worked on by the developer.