Pabst Farms

Mooovin’ Out Holsteins
For Homes and Businesses

by Elaine Schmidt

From Holsteins and horses to housing, hotels and a hospital, the Pabst Farms development on Intestate 94 west of Milwaukee is transforming a historic bit of Wisconsin countryside into the state’s largest planned community.

advertisement

The farms represent a piece of the Milwaukee area’s heritage, and farming will continue activity will continue.

“We expect that we will be adding close to $1.5 billion in real estate value to the property,” says Pabst Farms development manager Dan Warren.

The land making up the Pabst farm was purchased in 1906 by beer baron Fred Pabst. The 1,500-acre parcel was home to Holsteins, Percherons and Hackneys. Pabst’s breeding program was nationally recognized.

The Pabst family, which sold its last brewing operation in 2001, is working with the family of Illinois developer Peter Paul Bell to create what Betty Bell, Pabst Farms director of marketing, calls, “a legacy of the two families.”

When completed in about 12 years, the development will contain the original Pabst farm along with 1,200 residences divided between single-family homes and condo/town homes; 600,000 to 900,000 sq ft of retail space; 5,000,000 sq ft of business, office and health-care space; and 360 acres of open space, recreational trails and civic uses.

A Pabst Pie

The Pabst Farms development broke ground in 2003 with the installation of the initial infrastructure for the first portions of the development planned for construction. The site is divided roughly into thirds, for single- and multi-family housing, commercial/retail and light industrial, and some infrastructure was created for each of the three usage categories.

“There was thought given to planning of the initial infrastructure so that the project could unfold and take advantage of all the opportunities in all of the usage areas planned,” Warren says.

The first structures built on the site were an elementary school for the Oconomowoc School District and a YMCA in 2003-2004.

The project’s first residential structures followed, with a 170-lot, 100-acre, single-family subdivision called East Lake Village. The 2004 Parade of Homes for metro Milwaukee was held there.

The houses, which are situated on .25- to 1-acre lots, range from about $300,000 to more than $1 million. The houses are not sold partly because of the slowdown in the housing market.

At the same time as East Lake Village was under construction, the development’s business park was also getting under way. The first light industrial customer was the 80,000-sq-ft Ace Precision building, which houses a manufacturing company specializing in exotic metals. Concurrently, a local Harley Davidson dealership relocated to the business park.

In 2005 a Pick ‘n Save grocery store was constructed as was a Roundy’s distribution hub. A $189 million Aurora Medical Center broke ground in the spring, and a Hilton Garden Inn opened for business in June.

Pairing Off

A problem of creating a planned, mixed-use community is making sure that all the uses planned for the site complement each other. This becomes complicated when a single-family housing development is near a 1.1-million sq ft Roundy’s grocery distribution center that operates 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

“It’s when we move over to the commercial area that we have our biggest design challenge,” Bell says. “It’s kind of hard to hide a million-sq-ft grocery distribution center. The residents were concerned what this huge facility was going to do to their property values.”

Bell says that stringent design specs for the warehouse kept it in sync with the rest of the development with the addition of berms and landscaping to minimize the look of the building and impact of the truck traffic on the area.

“You have to balance the community need to have professional buildings and a hospital with how those will impact the close neighbors,” Bells says.

Future plans for the development include a lifestyle mall. Other plans are still in development.

Invoking Pabst History

The look of the development is intended to reflect the history of the original Pabst farm, Warren says.

“Architecturally, the look and feel of the development was intended to embody the Old World and the heritage of the Pabst family and Pabst Farms,” he adds.

That philosophy has translated into the use of the gable and dormers on some of the original farm buildings, which are being preserved as part of the project, and the use of materials like split-face field stone and planting of native prairie flowers and grasses.

“Because of its size, Pabst Farms is actually situated in two communities,” Warren says. “About two thirds of it is in the city of Oconomowoc, which is urban in character, and one third of it is in the town of Summit, which is rural in character. In terms of the architecture on the project and the lifestyle of the people living in the development, it shouldn’t make any difference whether you are in Summit or Oconomowoc.”

Fitting the development into the codes and expectations of the two municipalities hasn’t been easy, Warren says.

For example, both communities have their own codes and standards about street signs and streetlights, and these are still being worked out. But Bell says the project’s overriding design principle, which he defines as “building to the land, not on the land,” makes it worth the time and effort for the project to get the details right. For example, things looked at include the look and types of materials and conservation needs.

Bell says the intent of the development is not one of “getting in quick, putting something up, making a quick exist and moving on. Everything that’s being done, from construction decisions to the types of materials used, is being done with the long-term view and a view back to what this land was all about.”

Click here for next Feature Story >>