By Ryan Whisner
The Fort Atkinson City Council approved a $20,000 contract with Graef USA Inc. to conduct a traffic impact analysis around Fort Atkinson High School and the multiple proposed new developments along Banker Road.
Fort Atkinson City Engineer Andy Selle noted that with the development that’s occurring along Banker Road, the traffic impact is something the city wants to stay ahead of.
“We are I think well ahead of any major consequences out there with respect to traffic,” he said. “We could likely move forward with the construction of the buildings and have fairly minimal impacts.”
However, he admits that the intersection of Banker Road and Madison Avenue is something that could see more immediate changes from a safety standpoint based on information in the final report.
“The volume of traffic that we’re looking at is not significant,” Selle said. “It’s significant to us and Fort Atkinson but with respect to the roads and the various layout that we have, we should be in a pretty good position to handle the first phase of development.”
Proposed development around Banker Road has been discussed over the past few years by the council.
The city purchased 75 acres along Banker Road, with Vandewalle and Associates developing a neighborhood master plan, in 2021. The area was annexed into the city that year and is included in the new Tax Incremental Financing District No. 9.
Last September, the council chose the Hoffman Development Group LLC and CedarPrise LLC team as the master developer to develop the multifamily components of the neighborhood plan.
As recently presented to the Plan Commission, the preliminary plans are for three four-story buildings consisting of a total of 141 apartments in what has been designated as the Trillium Multifamily Neighborhood Development.
Further south at 1310-1320 Campus Drive, on land owned by Tip of The Spear LLC, commission members have seen preliminary concepts of two four-story, 36-unit apartment buildings.
Development for each site is on very different timelines with both still awaiting steps in the city’s approval process.
Tip of the Spear expects construction to get underway this summer and have its first building rentable by May 2024. The Trillium site must go through more rigorous financing, design, and build phase before construction is anticipated in June 2024.
“This is obviously the talk on social media about how you manage traffic in an area that already sees some heavy congestion throughout the day,” said Chris Scherer, council president. “Hopefully, our constituents understand that as development continues to occur in this area, we are constantly looking at traffic and rerouting options and ways to make everything (run) move smoothly and safely.”
Selle noted there are likely several years before there are significant impacts associated with new developments.
“Although the buildings will begin to go up, hopefully within a year or so, we won’t see major traffic impacts for several years beyond that,” he said.
For the traffic analysis, solicitations were requested from two firms, Graef of Milwaukee and TADI of Cedarburg.
As presented, he said the traffic report will be broken into three phases based on the likely and possible future developments.
The first consideration would be the addition of approximately 214 rental units along Banker Road, encompassing approximately three buildings within city-owned property and two at the corner of the high school’s access road and Campus Drive.
Secondly, to ensure a complete analysis, Selle also is having the report include looking at what the addition of a new middle school in the area and the potential closure of a portion of Campus Drive as has been discussed by the School District of Fort Atkinson would do to traffic patterns.
The third phase of the traffic analysis would be to consider the full build-out of the development as presented in the master plan approved by the city in 2021.
Council member Mason Becker said he appreciated that the study would consider multiple different scenarios of development in the area.
“I’m glad that we’re taking that into consideration and hopefully, that reassures residents that we are trying to be proactive and looking at some of these things,” he said.
Selle said the two firms were solicited based on experience with each.
“Traffic study is a little bit of a unique aspect so some of the firms that we deal with more consistently for water main design and sanitary sewer design they don’t necessarily have specializations in traffic control,” he said.
The proposed bids came back with roughly the same scope with no major differences between the overall approach. Unlike past traffic studies that used compression hoses across the road, cameras will be utilized to analyze the patterns in the area. Selle said this method allows them to differentiate between types of vehicles and get into more detail in the report.
He said Graef submitted a proposal at $20,000 and TADI at $38,000.
Funding for the contract, which was approved unanimously by the council members in attendance, will be drawn from the account containing funds borrowed to acquire the 75 acres two years ago. There is approximately $110,995 that remains in the account that is being used for the development contract on the property.
In addition, Selle said cost is expected to ultimately be shared among the city and the two developers, a process which will be formalized later.
Fort Atkinson Municipal Building. File photo/Kim McDarison.
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