OUR PLACE
Lake Geneva’s tattered and misused comprehensive plan for development. Who would have thought?
The plan is a requirement of the State of Wisconsin for all organized communities to come up with and then enforce. This plan is revamped every ten years. The ten-year period (Lake Geneva’s plan in is its second year) while the plan is in force is supposed to be pretty inviolable. In other words, everyone viewing it can have a pretty certain idea of what areas are going to be developed, re-developed, and/or built upon. The plan serves as both a vision into the short-term future as well as a planning and protection instrument for the developed land and citizenry already in place when the plan is finished, and its terms applied.
The current city leadership, backed by the city attorney, seems to feel that modifications and exceptions can be made to the plan subject to their consideration and decision. The plan isn’t supposed to work that way. Both Miribal Hummel and Whitewater Holdings ran into the plan, to their chagrin and failure to violate its terms. They both sold their properties. However, the ‘game is afoot’ once more, as both the developers of Summerhaven (located along South Lake Shore Drive), and Alliant Energy, are being given special consideration to violate the plan. Summerhaven wants high density where high density is not allowed in the area of contention, at least not by the rules laid out in the comprehensive plan.
Alliant Energy wants to move its wiring/power/transformer location from the building on Main Street onto the Hillmoor property. That property is zoned for recreational or agricultural usage, not for industrial development. Amazingly, Mayor Mayor and her stalwart ‘confederacy of dunces,’ is going to have a public hearing to discuss violating the comprehensive plan.
The public needs to show up on November 13th at city hall to deliver some truly incisive and cutting opinions about what is about to take place. The only time this current cabal of ‘leadership’ hears anything is if such messages are delivered at the top of the people’s voices.
Oktoberfest 2023
