Waukesha County moving ahead with building at Moor Downs

July 20, 2011

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By Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel

July 20, 2011 0

Waukesha - With construction bids already in hand and a required zoning change approved Wednesday by the Waukesha Common Council, Waukesha County officials are poised to start preliminary work on a new health and human services office building.

The County Board's Public Works Committee will meet Friday to approve final bids, said Allison Bussler, director of public works. Bids opened in mid-June came $3.4 million under a $36.7 million budget for the new office building and a grounds maintenance building.

On Wednesday, the Common Council voted 11-2 to rezone 5 acres, just enough land on the Moor Downs Golf Course to accommodate the building. The vote came after months of discussions between city and county officials over the project's impact on a golf course that is a designated historic landmark. It once was the site of Moor Mud Baths spa and resort hotel at the start of the 20th century.

The county is planning to build a 137,000-square-foot building along Riverview Ave. at the courthouse campus, to the east of the existing office building, to house human services, public health, veterans services and the Aging and Disability Resource Center.

First the county must remove an existing garage that houses groundskeeping operations and relocate them into a new service building to be constructed on land adjacent to the golf course, behind residences along Riverview and Buena Vista avenues.

Bussler said the maintenance building construction would start this fall, although landscaping and berms would be added next spring. Utilities also will be relocated this fall so construction can start on the health and human services building next spring.

The project will impede one hole of Moor Downs Golf Course, the fifth, requiring a shorter tee. The 347-yard hole will ultimately have two shorter tees, one a dogleg at 300 yards and a forward tee at 227 yards.

Dale Shaver, parks and land use director, said, "Our goal is to keep it open through construction."

About Laurel Walker

Laurel Walker covered local, school and county government for 20 years -- the last half of that at the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- before she was named Waukesha County columnist in 1997. Today she writes about the people, places and events around metropolitan Milwaukee with a broad suburban focus. She was the youngest of nine children raised on a central Wisconsin farm before leaving the nest for journalism studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a masters degree at the University of Oregon. She has spent the last half of her life in Waukesha County, where she and her husband raised two sons. Though she has a fondness for life in Waukesha, she eagerly partakes in the culture of the big city to the east and the recreation of the forests to the west. With sons in the arts, she has a special fondness for symphonic music concerts and art museums. She finds peace in a good book at a Northwoods getaway weekend, adventure in family visits to the east and west coasts, and satisfaction in a column well-written that reaches readers.