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More on this topic Menard has plans for bigger store here

Next step: Town of Sheboygan's board of appeals for variances

By Janet Ortegon
Sheboygan Press staff

The effort to bring a new Menard's home improvement store to the Town of Sheboygan is one step closer to reality.

The Eau Claire-based chain wants to build a new 214,000-square-foot store on the northwest corner of state Highway 42 and Interstate 43, near Vanguard Drive.

On Tuesday, the Sheboygan Town Board approved the rezoning, including seven conditions the town's Plan Commission had recommended relating to easements, building facade, landscaping and parking lot lights.

The project next goes to the town's board of zoning appeals Tuesday, Aug. 22, to address some ordinance variances for signage and fencing Menard Inc. has requested.

Tuesday's board meeting was a public hearing on the issue, but no one stepped up to the mic, said town chairman Dan Hein.

"I was a little bit surprised myself that there were no comments at all," Hein said Wednesday.

Theron Berg, senior real estate associate for Menard Inc., said that once the next hurdle is cleared, the company will buy approximately 53 acres from Odyssey Enterprises LLC, the current owner of the land.

The new store, which will be about twice the size of the existing store at 4309 county Highway J, will eventually employ approximately 150 full- and part-time people, roughly double the number of people who work there now.

Berg said he expects the project to break ground in early 2007 and that construction would take about a year.

"I would think (doors will open) in early '08, assuming we start in spring or summer of '07," Berg said. "The store's really only moving across the street, give or take."

Peter Mayer is the attorney for landowner Odyssey Enterprises, a limited liability company that dates back to 1996, when the Wisconsin first allowed LLCs. The partnership of Peter Kohler and the late Art Olsen — survived by his wife, Joan Olsen, in the partnership — goes back to the late 1970s or early 1980s, Mayer said.

While the purchase price for the land won't be public until the sale is completed, Mayer said Odyssey will be selling all the land it owns on that side of the highway, and it owns more acreage on the other side of state Highway 42.

"There is one more town review and then we expect within a relatively short period of time after that the property will be conveyed (to Menard)," Mayer said. "Odyssey had the idea, the interest of developing this property and constructed Vanguard Drive with exactly this type of use in mind."

According to Sheboygan Town Clerk Carol Holfeltz, the conditions approved were:

-- Menard's will provide a 66-foot-wide access easement for the property behind the parcel on which the new store will be built, so neighbors will continue to have access to their property.

-- Menard's will submit a storm-water management plan to the town engineer for review and approval.

-- Menard's will remove an existing 110-foot sign pole on the property and make related improvements, upon town approval, for a new sign. The new sign will be similar in size to the one that's currently on county Highway J.

-- Menard's will include a brick facade on the front of the new store up to the bottom of the front windows.

-- Menard's will complete landscaping as provided in the plan.

-- Lights in the parking lot will be full cut-off light fixtures, which shine directly down instead of horizontally around the area.

-- Menard's will provide an easement across the eastern 30 feet of the parcel, adjacent to the Interstate 43 right-of-way, for future sanitary sewer expansion.

Reach Janet Ortegon at jortegon@sheboygan-press.com or 453-5121.