Tim Ryan, tryan@shawanoleader.com
The law firm hired by the city to track down the heirs to the original Shawano Medical Center property has identified but not yet contacted them, according to city officials.
As a result, the city’s consideration of proposals for future use of the property put forward by a citizen task force will likely have to wait until February at the earliest.
The hospital at 309 N. Bartlett St. will move to a new building adjacent to the ThedaCare Physicians-Shawano clinic on County Road B. The new hospital is slated to open in early 2015.
The task force charged with finding a possible future use for the current SMC property has forwarded two options to the city’s Plan Commission and Common Council.
However, city officials say there is no point in looking at those proposals until heirs to the property sign off on changing a deed restriction on the property.
The site became home to Shawano Medical Center in 1931, despite of a deed restriction saying the property had to be used as a park and would revert back to the heirs if used for anything else.
Officials have no explanation for why a hospital was allowed to locate on the property, and there is nothing in the record that shows the deed restriction was ever waived.
The property now home to SMC was originally part of a larger property owned by Andrew Smalley and later became the possession of his widow, Susan, who donated a three-acre parcel to the city in 1901, according to a news article in the April 30, 1931, edition of the Shawano County Journal about plans for a hospital on the site.
SMC purchased additional land for expansion over the years, and the hospital campus now occupies about 10 acres. The deed restriction applies only to the original three acres.
The city hired the law firm of Davis and Kuelthau to track down the heirs and get their approval to strike the park restriction from the original deed.
The firm has identified seven living heirs to the property, including some “prominent names,” according to City Administrator Brian Knapp.
The city has declined to reveal the names of the heirs until contact is made.
Knapp said he has been waiting to see a copy of the letter to the heirs being drafted by Davis and Kuelthau.
The finalized list includes no direct blood relatives of Susan Smalley, Knapp said.
Instead, the heirs are the children and grandchildren from a second marriage of a woman who was previously married to one of the Smalley grandchildren. The SMC property was part of a marital settlement when the first marriage ended.
Knapp said the city wants to get a response from the heirs regarding the park deed restriction before considering the task force proposals for the property.
He said it could be February or March before the proposals go before the Plan Commission. It was initially hoped the proposals could be on the commission’s agenda in January.
Both proposals would be anchored by a waterfront supper club and lodge south of the property the task force was asked to examine, which would require obtaining five properties south of SMC.
Under one proposal, the existing SMC building would become a mix of senior housing, wellness center and community center, with a row of residential town houses to the north.
The alternate plan would raze the hospital building to make way for condominiums and town homes, along with additional green space and a park shelter. Two single-family residential lots would also be created in the far northwest corner, along Second Street.
The alternative plan also envisions a public path along the river, but Wolf River Beach would be discontinued.
Officials stress, however, that both plans are only concepts for the type of development the city would like to see.
Ultimately, whatever becomes of the former SMC property — assuming the heirs sign off on waiving the deed restriction — would depend on what some future developer might want to do with it.
