150-Plus Residents Oppose Seasons Apartment Plan; Commission Hears 'Density Concerns' For Two Hours

WAUKESHA — More than 150 residents packed a Plan Commission meeting Tuesday night to oppose the Seasons, a proposed 384-unit apartment development, with two hours of public comment that commissioners described afterward as 'thorough' and city staff described afterward as 'the longest since the dog park thing in 2019.'

The meeting, held in a city hall conference room rated for 84 people, required the fire marshal to make two separate visits to count heads. By the second visit, 41 additional residents were standing in the hallway, watching through a propped door and relaying testimony to each other in a kind of low-grade whisper relay that commissioners said made it difficult to tell where one comment ended and another began.

Patricia Kowalczyk, 58, who lives on Grand Avenue about six blocks from the proposed site, spoke for four minutes and 40 seconds, the longest individual comment of the night according to a sign-in sheet staff kept near the podium. 'This seems designed for a city three times the size of Waukesha,' Kowalczyk said, reading from three pages of handwritten notes and pausing once to ask whether her time was almost up, to which the commission chair said she had 'about a minute and a half left, take your time.'

The numbers in question

The development, proposed for a 6.2-acre parcel currently used as overflow parking for a since-closed furniture outlet, would include 384 units across four buildings, a leasing office with a listed 'resort-style' pool, and 412 parking spaces, a ratio opponents repeatedly called '1.07 spots per unit, which is not enough, and everyone here knows it.'

A petition opposing the project, circulated in the parking lot before the meeting and again in the hallway during it, collected 203 signatures by the time commissioners gaveled in, and 11 more during a bathroom break, for a final total organizers rounded up to 'over 200' in a follow-up email to commission staff sent at 11:47 p.m.

"It seems designed for a city three times the size of Waukesha."

— Patricia Kowalczyk, Grand Avenue resident

Council response

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who attended but does not sit on the Plan Commission, told residents the feedback would be reviewed 'with all due seriousness,' a phrase he repeated twice more over the course of the evening when asked directly whether the project would be approved. Puchalski said no timeline has been set for a commission vote, and declined to estimate one when a resident asked if it would happen 'before or after Thanksgiving,' saying only that 'these things take the time they take.'

Representatives for the development did not attend the meeting and did not respond to a request for comment sent to a general inquiries address listed on the project's zoning application. A spokesperson for Meadowline Residential Group, the firm behind the proposal, later provided a written statement saying the company 'looks forward to continuing a productive dialogue with the Waukesha community,' which several residents who received the identical statement forwarded to each other with variations of the subject line 'lol.'

What happens next

The Plan Commission took no vote Tuesday and instead continued the item to a future meeting, date to be determined, after a motion to table passed 6-1. Commission staff said written comments would remain open for 10 additional days, during which residents are expected to submit what one staffer estimated, based on the pace of the hallway petition, could be 'several hundred more pages, easily.'

Kowalczyk said after the meeting she planned to attend the continuation 'whenever that ends up being,' and had already begun drafting a longer version of her remarks in case she's given more time. 'I had more,' she said. 'I cut it down.'