Tim Ryan, tryan@shawanoleader.com
The Shawano Common Council on Wednesday agreed to partner with ThedaCare to hire a consultant to market the Shawano Medical Center property to prospective developers.
The hospital at 309 N. Bartlett St. will move to a new building adjacent to the ThedaCare Physicians-Shawano clinic on County Road B in early 2015.
The agreement calls for the city and ThedaCare to split the $60,000 cost of hiring Madison-based Vandewalle and Associates to market the property. The council approved up to $30,000 for the city’s share over the course of the next year.
Vandewalle had been contracted by ThedaCare for $30,000 to work with a city-appointed ad hoc task force to come up with proposals for future use of the SMC campus. That contract did not include marketing the property.
The resolution approved Wednesday calls for Vandewalle to market the property consistent with the task force recommendations.
The agreement is also contingent on the heirs of Smalley Park, where the hospital is located, signing off on changing a deed restriction on the property.
The site became home to Shawano Medical Center in 1931, despite 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.
Though there was little discussion by the council Wednesday, aside from a few points of clarification, the Finance Committee discussed the marketing agreement in depth Monday.
Mayor Lorna Marquardt said at the Finance Committee meeting that not everyone on the task force was pleased with Vandewalle’s work.
“Not all of the task force was in support of Vandewalle,” she said.
Marquardt said there also were reservations about the proposed marketing agreement, with some commenting that “$60,000 was a lot of money with no guarantees of resolution.”
SMC Chief Executive Officer Dorothy Erdmann told the committee that no one could guarantee a developer for the property.
“We have to let the process work,” she said. “There wouldn’t be anyone who could promise we would have people in there developing it.”
The task force has forwarded two options for potential reuse of the property to the city’s Plan Commission and Common Council.
Both proposals would be anchored by a waterfront supper club and lodge, 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.
“It’s not the way it’s going to be developed, but it’s a good starting point for what we could have there,” City Administrator Brian Knapp said.