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Home / Blog / Brookfield rejects $33.7 million development with Wheel & Sprocket, apartments
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Brookfield rejects $33.7 million development with Wheel & Sprocket, apartments

Dec 05, 2023Dec 05, 2023

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Brookfield officials on an 11-3 vote rejected plans for a $33.7 million Capitol Drive apartment building anchored by a Wheel & Sprocket store after a lengthy and occasionally combative meeting this week.

The rejection sends the local developer team back to the literal drawing board to draft a new plan if they want to continue pursuing a project. Their most recent proposal for 75 market-rate apartments in a four-story building was the latest of several design concepts presented in the past two years in attempts to gain approval.

Joseph Lak, a principal in The Heimat Group, said the rejection Tuesday at Brookfield’s Common Council disappointed the project team considering 5-1 approval votes for the proposal in earlier city committee meetings.

“We hold out hope that we can communicate with Common Council members in the months ahead to find a productive way forward that balances our project goals with the concerns of the community,” Lak said.

Glendale-based The Heimat Group is a partner with Wheel & Sprocket’s ownership on the project. Planning started as Wheel & Sprocket’s owners in the Kegel family looked to replace their existing store at the corner of Capitol Drive and Lilly Road. They also acquired a neighboring former car repair shop.

That car repair property is contaminated, which raised the price of a new development on the corner, and prompted Wheel & Sprocket to pursue the larger mixed-use proposal with Heimat Group. Their proposed building includes a ground-floor space for Wheel & Sprocket and other retailers, with market-rate apartments on the upper levels.

Before the Brookfield Common Council meeting Wheel & Sprocket president Noel Kegel sent out letters encouraging people to communicate their support.

“Unfortunately, a small group of residents has taken offense to the project and the Common Council is being swayed to block the project,” that letter said. “The project comes up for approval on Tuesday, May 2, and I fear I don't have the votes.”

The Common Council’s resolution rejecting the project plan said the 58-foot-tall building is too high, its setbacks are seven feet more narrow than the current city standard, and it is too dense for that property and the surrounding neighborhood.

Brookfield Ald. Scott Berg, who was among 11 who voted against the proposal, noted that “this site isn’t going to get better on its own,” due to its contamination.

“I don’t see this as being as binary as people are making it out to be,” Berg said. “We’re not going to make everybody happy, that is for sure, but what are the best opportunities to keep the neighborhood safe, maintain the character of the neighborhood, keep the children safe, yet not have a blighted property?”

Berg’s statements came near the end of a more than three-hour discussion of the project at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting.

Ald. Mike Hallquist made a lengthy statement shortly before the votes, and was once interrupted by profane name-calling, and again by interjections from another alderman. Hallquist said he is “not convinced a better project exists” considering the challenges of the site. He was among three aldermen who voted in favor of the development.

“I think we can send a message that the Common Council are reasonable, consistent and thoughtful with their approach to adjudicating development proposals in their community that acknowledges a necessary compromise between the developers and what residents want, and what the free market is willing to provide,” Hallquist said.

The Common Council left a proposed tax incremental financing district for the site on the back burner. That TIF district would have covered about $3.5 million of the environmental cleanup costs for the property.

Under the proposal, the developers would spend the money on the cleanup. The TIF district would use the new property taxes generated by the development to repay them up to $3.5 million.

The rejection of the rezoning for the property leaves the TIF proposal on the shelf. However, it could be revised or reconsidered by early September if the developers are able to secure city support for a revised plan for the property.