The long-awaited new outdoor pool-family park of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center could be on its way to opening in the summer of 2007.
This project, which the City of Mequon planning commission had voted down in February, was reconsidered by seven members of the nine-member body Monday.
This time the commissioners present approved the conditional use permit unanimously.
Two new developments made the difference. First, Traffic Analysis and Design Inc., a traffic engineering firm hired by the city of Mequon with JCC reimbursement, submitted new data regarding the likely changes in traffic patterns around the site.
Previous projections were based on figures from the Institute of Traffic Engineers. However, those figures were applicable to “a year-round, all-weather health and fitness facility,” said JCC president Jay R. Roth.
The planned Hy and Richard Smith JCC Family Park, however, is an outdoor facility that would only be open in the summer, and its level of usage will depend on weather, Roth said. So a more realistic projection of the traffic may resemble the recorded traffic around the JCC’s previous family park in Bayside, he said.
As Bruce Block, attorney for the JCC, said to the planning commission Monday, the highest number of trips per day to the Bayside facility was about 60 during the week, and the average was “under 30” — much less than the ITE projection of 210 trips.
That would keep the traffic levels, particularly at the corner of Mequon Rd. and Market St., at acceptable levels, Roth said.
Deed restrictions
The second development concerned the land around the projected facility, which would be located on seven-and-a-half acres facing Mequon Rd. between Market St. and Oriole Lane.
Around that site are some 35 acres to the south and five acres to the north, which are jointly owned by the JCC and the Jewish Home and Care Center’s Sarah Chudnow Campus on N. Market St., Roth said.
Mequon officials wanted to make sure that this land would be used for residential rather than commercial development, Roth said.
The JHCC and the JCC, with the help of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, have agreed to “deed restrict the land” to make sure that any development would be residential, said Roth. He said both the JHCC and the federation have been “extremely supportive” in this effort.
These developments changed minds on the commission, particularly that of commission chair and Mequon Mayor Christine Nuernberg. She had voted against the project at the previous meeting on Feb. 6; but she said Monday that the JCC had “addressed every question that has come up” and called the endeavor “a great project.”
Roth said, “We appreciate that the Mequon planning commission was open-minded and was willing to rehear the issues and address them in a positive way.”
The planning commission approval does not necessarily mean the end of the process. Under Mequon law, two members of the Common Council may request that the matter go before that body.
Susan Nelson, alderman for the district in which the family park would be sited, has spoken in opposition to the project at planning commission meetings.
“I’ve been supportive of the families most immediately affected” who live in the area, particularly on Oriole Lane, “and they are opposed. I’m doing my role in supporting their concerns,” Nelson told The Chronicle in a telephone conversation Tuesday.
However, Nelson, whose term ends this year, also said she does not know yet whether she will try to bring the matter to the Common Council.
Roth said that because the planning commission vote was unanimous, “we do not believe it is likely” that its decision can be overturned.
Roth said he hopes construction will begin on the facility this summer. If that can happen, the facility could be ready and open by Memorial Day in 2007, he said.
In addition to an outdoor pool for lap swimming, the plans call for a diving well and board, a clubhouse, tennis courts, a picnic area, a playground and a parking lot for about 150 cars.
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