Sixteen years of on-and-off-again litigation over the Lake Bluff Apartments is coming to an end.
The South Milwaukee City Council voted 8-0 Tuesday night to settle a complicated lawsuit involving, among others, State Financial Bank, the American Civil Liberties Union and the owners of the two lakefront apartment buildings that the city contended for years were built illegally.
Here is an in-depth Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story summarizing the lawsuit from 2009 — written before a Milwaukee County Circuit Court jury decided that, if the city tore down Lake Bluff, it would be considered discrimination against the low-income and disabled residents who live there.
That ruling set in motion the settlement talks, which culminated with Tuesday’s vote. Here are the key details:
- Under the settlement, the city will move to rezone the Lake Bluff properties “multifamily,” making the buildings there legal and allowing us to collect the appropriate property taxes (estimated at $60,000 annually, compared to the $10,000 we currently collect).
- Lake Bluff will buy the adjacent 13-acre Northwestern Barrel Superfund site from Towne Realty and donate it to the city for use as a park or other public purpose (such as stormwater mitigation). It will be named after late Towne founder Joseph Zilber.
- Lake Bluff will also pay a significant part of attorney fees involved in the case. The city pays none.
- The ACLU will release a statement saying the city has met its fair housing obligations.
Of course, the deal is much more complicated than that because the case itself is so complicated. You can imagine the paperwork (and legal fees) that 16 years of litigation has wrought.
In the end, however, the deal is a good one because it’s time. It’s time for this to end. It’s time to move on.
The city was victorious in court every step along the way … until the 2009 ruling. We could have appealed, but that would have meant more years of court battles and more tarnish to our image. It’s a prospect few were happy with, including me.
This settlement gives us a chance to put this behind us. I’m ready to do so.
Do you agree? I’d like to know what you think. Post your comments below, and vote in the new poll on the right-hand side of this page.
South Milwaukee Blog 