As you drive north along Highway 59/164, the sign and the large empty building is evident.
It has been for seven years.
As employees of City Hall drive into the office each day the empty building across the street is evident.
It has been for three years.
And as Sentry employees and customers arrive to shop and work on the southwest side of the city the empty properties are evident.
It has been for a number of years as well.
These are just a few examples of blighted properties that stand out in the city of Waukesha.
It's no different in other municipalities. And as Bob Fleming, owner of two Sentry grocery stores in Waukesha, said there's always going to be "winners and losers" in development.
But when you have a business within a commercial district that isn't getting filled it takes a toll on your business.
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Old center's decline
Fleming, who owns the Sentry on West Sunset Drive and West St. Paul Ave., is one person who has had an up close look of the Fox Run Shopping Center, which has been on the decline for years and went into foreclosure in early 2014.
His Sentry store is just one of three tenants left at the original Fox Run Shopping Center. (Those tenants don't include Kohl's Department Store and adjacent shops in the newer part of the center that is under separate ownership).
"It becomes tougher when you're the only destination," Fleming said. "It makes it more difficult for sure."
That's not to say Fleming doesn't like where his store is at.
"It's still one of the better intersections in Waukesha," said Fleming, adding that he believes ownership issues have hindered growth at the center. "It's a viable location; we just need more stores."
Maybe that will happen in the coming years. But right now, the center is about to be transferred to a bank for a sheriff's sale auction, set to take place on Wednesday, July 29, at the Waukesha County Courthouse.
The lack of redevelopment has impacted the center as a whole. City of Waukesha Assessor Mike Patnode said the 11.5-acre site has decreased in value from approximately $4.2 million in 2011 to now just more than $2.7 million.
Community Development Director Jennifer Andrews said she hasn't heard much recently about the property owners trying to actively market the site.
Much newer, but vacant
While the Sentry store is still operating at Fox Run, another site that was also once home to a Sentry sits vacant on the opposite side of the city.
The 62,450-square-foot building, at the corner of Highway 164 and Arcadian Avenue, originally housed a Jewel-Osco grocery store when it opened in 2002 on 7.56 acres.
After Jewel-Osco moved out of Wisconsin just five years later, the store was left vacant. However, not long after, Fleming began operating a Sentry store on the site. He said the store was given to his team as part of a larger transaction.
But in March 2008, that store also closed.
Since then, the store has sat vacant, with lease or sale signs for the parcel indicating that the property is being marketed, though without much success. (Commercial Property Associates Inc. remains the leasing agent for the site. Its term runs through 2019).
Andrews said the property is on one of the busier intersections in Waukesha as 35,100 cars pass along Highway 164 per day, which would seem to make it an attractive commercial property.
But there's a problem.
Fleming and Andrews both noted that after an intersection was altered on Highway 164, it made left-turn access in or out of the lot onto Arcadian impossible. Eastbound traffic must use a neighboring parcel, where Waukesha's original Walmart once operated and now a Walmart Neighborhood Market stands, to reach the vacant site.
"Once (the state) changed the intersections there, it had terrible egress," Fleming said. "It's an impossible entrance to access. I don't know how you change that."
With that in mind, Fleming doesn't see a retail business finding its way into the vacant space. Even less likely is another supermarket there, given the presence of the new Woodman's Food Market a few blocks north and the Walmart Neighborhood Market next door. Both opened in 2013.
Andrews agreed. In fact, the city initially viewed the site for industrial use.
The lot was developed while it was still under the jurisdiction of the town of Waukesha, which zoned it for commercial use. However, it was soon annexed into the city.
"I would see this as a manufacturing site, similar to the adjacent industrial park," Andrews said. "We're happy to have it in the city and want to have it repurposed in some matter."
While the property is available, there are reasons it may not have sold. Andrews noted that, in some cases, owners also might not be inclined to sell right away as they are often still collecting fees from the user on the lease.
Regardless, Patnode said the value on this site has dipped from more than $7 million in 2009 to just more than $3 million in the 2015 reassessment.
Vacancy near City Hall
Andrews and other city officials have a clear view of another eyesore in the city.
For almost three years, the strip mall known as the Delafield Shopping Center across from City Hall on Delafield Street has sat vacant. Any curb appeal the site had has dissipated, and there have been interior and mechanical issues since the vacancy.
Moreover, like other vacant buildings, the value of the property has continued to decrease in recent years. Patnode said the property is listed at $819,200, down from $1.3 million in 2011.
The owners of the site have said they want to sell the building and previously indicated they are "stuck with it."
So what's the future of this 82,155-square-foot site, which sits on 1.88 acres?
"We get questions on this site a lot, as it's a very visible building, and we would love to see it get reused," Andrews said.
Andrews said the only prospective project that has come to the city for the strip mall is a multifamily development. However, that plan didn't move forward since the city's master plan for the site calls for commercial or mixed uses.
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No easy solution
Information on what might happen is otherwise extremely limited. Separate developers for the Delafield site and for the former Jewel-Osco did not return calls seeking comment.
So what's the answer to these blighted properties and why can't these spaces get filled quicker? The answer, Andrews said, is complicated and the city sometimes has its hands tied as to what it can do.
"People have property rights, and it's no different than a single-family home," Andrews said. "But if it's being maintained, then they have the right not to occupy and not to sell. There's nothing to force a sale of the property."
Can the city get property owners to turn over prime commercial land, or would the city be willing to buy the land from an owner? Not likely, Andrews said.
"The city doesn't have the capital to purchase these properties," Andrews said.
While she said the city has purchased property before to assist in redevelopment, including in and around downtown, she said the city, as a whole, isn't "in the business to purchase private property."
She said there are instances, however, where the city can provide tax-incremental financing assistance "if it makes sense."
Such was the case with the former Kmart site on Sunset Drive and at Woodman's Food Market, 1600 E. Main St., where the return on investment was a substantial tax base, Andrews said. For example, the city has gained close to $20 million in tax base from Woodman's.
"That's one of the reasons that site didn't stay vacant for a long time," Andrews said. "The city participating in the process helped in the redevelopment, as the (demolition) cost was significant."
Ability to enforce codes
And while the property owner has the right to keep its land, the city still has the power to enforce its ordinance codes if owners aren't keeping up with the property.
Andrews said the fire department checks commercial properties, whether they are occupied or not, once or twice a year. She said the building across from City Hall had one minor violation when it first became vacant but has recently made some exterior upgrades.
Waukesha aldermen also recently expressed their displeasure with how a property owner wasn't adequately maintaining an unrelated site at the southeast corner of Moreland Boulevard and Delafield Street — the site of the former Mack's frozen custard stand.
The commercial space has been vacant since the owners tore down the ice cream building a few years ago. Since then, aldermen have watched as no progress has been made on redeveloping the site and as the property continues to become an eyesore. The property owners said they want to get the property redeveloped but just haven't found the right tenant yet.
Communicating is key
Keeping in contact with property owners and brokers is one of the best ways the city can foster quicker redevelopment on sites, Andrews said.
"We try to have an open line of communication with brokers and talk with them about sites that are for sale and what types of users they're looking for," Andrews said. "We could then match the tenants up with a broker."
It's also up to the property owner to decide whether to tear down a building or to try to find a new tenant.
Just last year, the roof of the former Kmart building on Sunset Drive — a building that was vacant for three years — was on the brink of caving in. One solution would have been to tear it down, but the developer wanted to keep the building for a new user to minimize the costs. The developer's plans worked — the site is now being redeveloped with the help of TIF funds.
"The first thing developers look at is a cost-benefit analysis of rehabbing the building versus starting over," Andrews said. "The second is whether the space is suitable for future tenants versus building a new building."
While the city isn't responsible for maintaining these properties and still collects taxes from property owners, Andrews understands they give the city a bad look, especially along major traffic areas.
"It's never good for a building to sit vacant for a long time," she said. "It starts to deteriorate and is less desirable as the years go on."
But with every passing year, that's what is happening to multiple sites in Waukesha.