Tim Ryan, tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
The former Shawano Medical Center could be demolished and replaced with green space by the end of summer after the Shawano Plan Commission on Wednesday approved a resolution authorizing an agreement with ThedaCare to raze the building.
The resolution next week goes to the Common Council, which also is expected to approve the plan.
City officials drafted an agreement with ThedaCare to have the former hospital at 309 N. Bartlett St. torn down after both parties concluded there was no viable use for the building. That conclusion was reached after the Menominee Indian Tribe recently pulled out of plans to convert the building into a multi-use facility.
Last year, there was a development plan to convert the building into a medical residency training center, but those plans fell apart in August after objections from ThedaCare, which viewed it as potentially competing with the new ThedaCare Medical Center-Shawano.
Mayor Lorna Marquardt noted that the developer in that case would have also covered the city’s legal fees and would have paid to raze the building if the training center wasn’t successful.
After that option fell through, ThedaCare offered to cover the cost of demolishing the building if no other use for it could be found.
“We are taking steps to honor our commitment to the community to not allow the old building to languish and become a burden. ThedaCare will spend the money to take down the building, as we promised,” said Dorothy Erdmann, CEO of ThedaCare Medical Center-Shawano, in a press release Wednesday.
ThedaCare will apply for the required demolition permits at the local and state levels, which is expected to take about 45 days. Demolition would take another 45 to 60 days.
ThedaCare said its goal is to recycle 90 percent of the building, including copper pipes and wires, interior wooden doors, windows, bricks, kitchen equipment and myriad other building items.
Todd Dobberstein, who is leading a citizen’s group proposing that the former hospital site be converted into a multi-use community center, told the plan commission that those plans would actually work best starting from scratch.
“Every plan I was coming up with and that the developer was coming up with meant demolishing the building,” he said.
Dobberstein is continuing to work with a developer on options for the site, which he told the commission could also include other options such as multi-family housing and a restaurant.
There is also another party interested in the site as a location for a hotel, according to City Administrator Brian Knapp.
That proposal would be closer to the recommendations that came out of a citizen task force that studied future possible uses for the property two years ago. Options included a waterfront supper club and lodge, and a mix of condominiums and town homes, along with additional green space and a park shelter, and two single-family residential lots.
Knapp said it’s the city’s hope that whatever eventually develops at the site will add to the city’s tax base, increase jobs and bring tourists and visitors to the city.
The city owns a roughly 3.5-acre parcel of the property that became home to the original Shawano Medical Center in 1931 and was leased from the city. Shawano Medical Center purchased additional land for expansion over the years, and the hospital campus now occupies about 10 acres overlooking the Wolf River near downtown Shawano.