By Chris Spangler
The Fort Atkinson Plan Commission has approved a site plan that reconfigures Fort Memorial Hospital’s southeast parking lot to add 40 stalls.
Meeting Tuesday, the commission reviewed Fort HealthCare’s proposed building configuration, site layout and access, parking, exterior building design, landscaping, grading and erosion, stormwater, exterior lighting, signage and operational plan.
City engineer Andy Selle noted that Fort HealthCare has been moving forward with several campus improvements related to consolidating many clinics within its footprint.
“Parking is of the utmost consideration. This is a design that simply is rearranging an existing lot to gain additional parking within the area,” Selle wrote in a memo to the commission.
“It rearranges many of those internal islands in order to gain more efficient parking and also gain better access to some of their front-door facilities,” he added.
This site plan is not connected to the hospital’s plans to extend the parking lot across North Fourth Street. However, the additional 40 parking stalls were counted in that overall project.
In late March, the Fort Atkinson City Council voted in favor of vacating a section of North Fourth Street, between McMillen and Armenia streets, for parking lot expansion. The vote was 4-1, with Councilman Eric Schultz casting the “no” vote.
The hospital owns the four properties in that segment on the north side of the street.
According to Selle’s memo, Fort HealthCare’s 9.6-acre site includes the main hospital campus at 611 E. Sherman Ave. Today, there are multiple on-site surface parking areas, one of which includes the 78 spaces at the southeastern corner of the property.
The proposed project in Tuesday’s site plan review impacted approximately 1.75 acres of the far southeastern portion of the site. This included configuring the lot to increase on-site spaces from 78 to 118, moving the ADA (Americans Disability Act) stalls closer to the front door and improving on-site circulation. Other components included a new retaining wall, landscaping and exterior lighting.
Selle told the Plan Commission on Tuesday that in addition to reconfiguring the southeast lot, the plan calls for building a “planted retaining wall” along the south side of the hospital’s lot facing East Sherman Avenue.
There were three conditions for site plan approval:
• According to the zoning code, the access driveway at McMillan Street must be 24 feet wide instead of the current 26 feet.
• Light fixtures that are 23 feet high must be lowered to 20 feet in accordance with zoning code.
• Bicycle parking stalls are required.
Stormwater services will be connected to a catch basin at the corner of McMillan Street and Sherman Avenue instead of solely on Sherman. Thus, traffic flow on Sherman Avenue/State Highway 106 will not be impeded.
Commissioner Davin Lescohier made the motion to approved the site plan review. Commissioner Eric Schultz seconded it and it was unanimously approved.
The site plan does not advance to the full city council.
Lot boundaries redefined
Also during the meeting, the Plan Commission gave the go-ahead for CBF Investments to redefine the boundaries of three commercial lots, located at 1504 and 1530 Madison Ave. on the city’s northwest side.
“This is a CSM (certified survey map) that’s really redefining lot boundaries for properties we know as the Goodwill (of South-Central Wisconsin) property and Fort HealthCare property out within what’s called the Lexington Center development,” Selle said.
He said the certified survey map has been studied at length by city staff, CBF Investments and Fort HealthCare.
“This will break off the parcel into three different lots: Fort HealthCare, Goodwill and a non-developable outlot to the west, between Goodwill and the strip mall with Pizza Hut in it that was intentionally left undefined for future parking,” Selle explained.
He noted in a memo to the Plan Commission that “Fort HealthCare, eventual owners of the parcel, will close access to Lexington Drive and make improvements to the end of Doris Drive to functionally terminate it near its current location.”
Selle said that the city required dedication of additional land on the end of Doris Drive and an easement for a private storm sewer line running in front of the east side of the Goodwill building, a relic from a time when Doris Drive was expected to continue further east.
CBF Investments currently owns all the parcels.
The Plan Commission unanimously recommended that the city council approve this preliminary certified survey map with three conditions:
• Signed acknowledgment of property owners affected by the closure of Lexington Avenue access.
• Review of final cross-access between the properties.
• Removal of the building setback lines that had been on the certified survey map.
A site plan, approved Tuesday with three conditions, by the Fort Atkinson Plan Commission shows the Fort Memorial Hospital’s southeast parking lot reconfigured to include an additional 40 stalls, bringing the number of stalls within the lot from 78 to 118. Additional stalls were gained by rearranging stalls and internal islands within the lot, according to City Engineer Andy Selle.
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