Demo of homes, rezoning to parking for City Brewery passes one La Crosse committee, on to next

Demolishing some homes and converting those properties to parking for City Brewing Company passed one La Crosse committee and gets another look from another committee Tuesday.

City council president Barb Janssen said the zoning change for 10 properties went through Monday’s City Plan Commission meeting without major problems.

The Judiciary & Administration Committee (agenda here) will discuss the proposal at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Southside Neighborhood Center (map). The meeting can also be viewed online here.

City Brewery wants to demolish six homes on lots it purchased and convert that area — 10 lots — to parking, as it is set for a multi-million-dollar expansion that could begin in 2021.

The city doesn’t typically like rezoning and demolishing homes for parking — especially in a major city corridor. The city usually sides with homes over parking but “not regarding these particular homes,” city council president Barb Janssen said Monday on La Crosse Talk PM. “The need for City Brewery to have additional property is very clear.”

The rezoning and demo is being recommended for a number of reasons — City Brewery’s limited space, the creation of additional jobs at the expansion facility, as well as that area, apparently, being troublesome.

“Those particular properties,” Janssen said, “before the brewery had purchased them — under I believe a different LLC — the number of police calls and that kind of thing were just huge over there.

“The representative from the brewery spoke about the drug problems and things like that. So, one could perceive this as a very positive change for that section of town.”

La Crosse senior planner Tim Acklin said staff is supporting not requiring City Brewery to establish a PILOT agreement for these properties, either, due to its $63 million facility investments in 2020 and the $34 million facility investments in 2021.

“Should the Common Council approve this condition the City Brewery would not be invoiced for their first payments until the beginning of 2023,” Acklin wrote.

The properties that would be rezoned would be on Jackson, 4th and 3rd streets. Two homes are located on Jackson, while four more are on 4th Street.

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