(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam mayor discussed a project that aims to bring more housing options to the city during a recent Community Comment. Beaver Dam is receiving a $145-thousand-dollar site clean-up grant from the Wisconsin Development Corporation to help reinvigorate the sparsely used lot at the corner of Ryan Cantafio’s Way and South Center Street. The space is lined by unused buildings and underground petroleum and hazardous material tanks that need removal.
Mayor Becky Glewen says the city purchased the property from the county around five years ago and have been working since to find a good project to make use of the land.
“Right now, we have a developer that answered an RFP for us, we put out a request-for-proposal and asked for people to come up with a housing project,” says Glewen. “That individual, his name is Kaba Bah, he’s from Madison and he’s done some projects in Madison. He has [had] a lot of meetings with us to try to determine the feasibility of making a project like that happen there.”
Glewen says Kaba Bah worked with Beaver Dam leaders to acquire the grant funds to help cover the costs to take down the empty structures and begin clean-up efforts. She notes that work still needs to be done before ground can be broken on the housing project.
“We still have to go through the process of talking with the developer about what the end piece is and will that work and the funding behind it,” says Glewen. “And if we can still come to a development agreement with [Kaba Bah] or some other entity to try to get housing there.”
Glewen says there have been preliminary discussions to construct affordable apartments as well as condos that would run approximately $225-to-$250-thousand-dollars.
The mayor adds that the farmer’s market, that currently uses the lot every Wednesday and Saturday, will eventually have to find a new location. She says that the city is in conversation with organizers on a change of venue with hopes of keeping the farmer’s market in the downtown.
