By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer
ASHWAUBENON – A low bid of $148,500 from Robinson Brother Environmental, of Waunakee, was approved Tuesday, July 23, by the Ashwaubenon village board to demolish the buildings at the former Schneider trucking site along South Broadway.
The Village of Ashwaubenon now owns the approximately 22 acres of land after purchasing the property for $1.25 million.
The village has been working with Radue Homes and McMahon & Associates to redevelop the site, which would be known as Aldon Station with housing units that include duplexes, townhomes and apartment-style condominiums.
The property has been rezoned from I-2 heavy industrial to R-2 two-family residential and R-3 multi-family residential.
Public Works Director Doug Martin said the demolition will be part of the contract work taking place at the site.
“Since early this year, there’s been the site survey, the start of some of the design work, some of the environmental sampling that’s been done,” Martin said. “The design to this point is about 75 percent (completed). I think about two months back we had the contracts that came through for the asbestos survey and abatement of the buildings, so that all the asbestos has been taken care of above ground, so that’s complete.”
Martin said it’s now possible to demolish the existing structures on the site to ground level, with the foundations, ground floor slabs and all fencing remaining in place for the time being.
“All the buildings that are on site would be torn down and demolished as part of this contract,” he said. “From there, all the rest of the work would be bid out as a site and utility and roadway contract…”
Once the results are known from all the environmental sampling being done on site, Martin said a contract could then be put together for all the work from ground level on down.
Of the six qualified bidders, he said the demolition bids ranged from $148,500 to $464,015.
Martin said an alternate bid was also obtained in the event all of the concrete buildings on site could be crushed to reduce the bid price and provide gravel for use during the project.
However, he said the work couldn’t be done with the alternate bids because some of the slabs had insulation blown into the center cores, so if that would be sent through a grinder, it would start sending all those pieces up into the air and cause issues with airborne insulation.
“We won’t be doing any crushing,” Martin said. “Everything will get sent to the landfill, because of the insulation that was blown into the core. A lot of the concrete walls and floors – the cost savings wasn’t there to do so, because of that insulation being in the concrete.”
Martin said the demolition work would start in August, and it will be toward the middle to the end of September when a bid would be awarded for the road and utility work that would follow the demolition.
Though the village has not previously worked with Robinson Brothers Environmental, Martin said McMahon and Associates has worked with that company on a couple of projects with good results.
Preliminary plat
In other action, the board approved a preliminary plat for the Aldon Station development.
Community Development Director Aaron Schuette said the plat would divide up the property into around 60-70 parcels, which would eventually be for sale upon the final plat being put together in the near future.
Schuette said the recommended conditions of approval include:
• Splitting Outlot 5 trail access from the south side of Aldon Circle into its own outlot to create a hard boundary between the development and Ashwaubenon Creek.
• Obtaining approvals from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the village prior to filling the floodway and floodplain on the site.
• Changing the proposed zoning note to R-2 and R-3 with the Planned Unit Development overlay district.
• Changing the wetland note indicating Outlot 1 to Outlot 5.
• Receiving approval from the Brown County Planning Commission.
“I will expect when we have the final plat come through that we’ll have these conditions of approval addressed down there, such as creating an Outlot 6, where Outlot 5 is split for the trail access,” he said. “The parcel lines may shift a little bit, north or south, but really it should be substantially similar to the preliminary plat.”
Schuette said the village has received preliminary results from the additional environmental testing done at the site through a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant, and the firm Stantec will be going through the sampling results for the village.