Posted: May 20, 2009

Oak Creek - The city will purchase 255 acres of land near Oakwood Road and Howell Avenue and promptly sell some of the property to the Oak Creek-Franklin School District and much of it to a developer.

The property, mostly farmland owned by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District, is on the southwest corner of Oakwood Road and Howell Avenue.

The Common Council in its May 19 meeting unanimously approved spending $7 million to purchase the land and get it back on the city's tax rolls after more than 20 years off.

The School District plans to purchase 50 acres of the land and potentially construct a new high school on the site. District officials have said Oak Creek High School is at its ideal capacity and they have started to get residents' thoughts on building a second high school.

The School Board previously voted to borrow $1.6 million to purchase the land from the city once the council finalized a deal with MMSD.

The property also includes about 34 acres of wooded areas that will stay the same while the remainder of the land - about 166 acres - will be sold to a developer.

The city is expected to close the sale with MMSD on June 5, City Administrator Pat DeGrave said. Negotiations with a potential developer were still ongoing, he said.

When MMSD bought the land in 1986, it had proposed a sewage sludge landfill for the site. That never came to fruition, and the sewage district has since leased most of the land to farmers.

 

Mark Schaaf can be reached at (262) 446-6605.