New Developments in West Bend with Jay Shambeau
Big things are happening in West Bend, Wis., and on this week's episode, City Administrator Jay Shambeau joins me to talk about a few of the really cool things going on like The District and the Regner Park beach house.
Transcript
Now I didn't ask him during the interview, but he did assure me after the interview that barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Seventh Avenue construction in West Bend will be done in October, and selfishly, as a guy who works off Seventh Avenue, and with Highway 45 North on ramps being shut down, I was most certainly happy to hear that, because that means I can take D up to 45.
So, here are 15 minutes on the great things going on in West Bend. With Jay Shambeau. So
Jay, for those of us like me who pretend to know what a city administrator role is, but only do so so that you don't think that we don't know, what do city administrators do?
[:I work closely with the department heads at the city level, implement the policies that the city council and mayor set on an annual and organizational wide basis. So we perform all of the, the duties of service industry, such as a government organization does. And as the, Chief Appointed Officer, not the Chief Elected Officer within the city, um, I help carry out those duties.
So it's a hired
[: [:I enjoy being out and about at city and community events. Certainly.
[:There's something always going on, which is great, and at a city of this size, kind of expected, but our agency, Epic Creative, has been involved with a number of Projects along the way in some sort of fashion, you know, helping with idea generation at the Riverwalk to, you know, small sponsorship role at the, the Regner Park Beach House.
But from all of those things going on in the city, what projects are you most excited about right now? Yeah,
[:And lots of excitement for the community to have about the future of West Bend as well. Some of the projects were existing, that are existing and that we're working on is the Riverwalk, as you mentioned. Um, thanks for the help with the design of that. The design for signage and the future of how that looks has been great.
er Walk that was completed in: design. At the same time, in:Working on that and prepping the utilities were a mess of a hundred years of spiderweb utilities over. Patch this here, you know, stick this right out there. When the markings come, came through before we started the project, it was. Pretty interesting and a little scary. That project is, it literally took the entire year to get completed.
d to first phase construction:So we're calling that phase four. Okay. And that'll, We'll be kind of concurrent with phase two, uh, Riverwalk construction. So in front of the HKS building and all the way to the skate park, if people know where that's located, that'll get a facelift. And then the last phase, the one remaining phase behind the, the formerly known as Ziegler building and the BMO building, that Riverwalk is, we're calling phase three construction.
And that's scheduled for: [:But looking at seeing both sides of it now, it's tremendous how, Awesome the Riverwalk looks on the east side, and I'm very excited for what that's going to do for the city once the west side is complete. Both for businesses, for recreation, just the entire vibe of the city there
[:Yeah, it's a stark difference now. And completing the east side really shined a bright light on the failing west side. And I totally agree. We're anticipating businesses refacing some component of their business towards the Riverwalk. Some are already talking about upgrading the backs of their buildings and calling them the fronts of their buildings.
Right. That'll be exciting.
[: [:Yeah, that's a sneaky big parcel. The Speed Shop, as you mentioned, has been there for 40 years. So it's known as a brewery, but they haven't brewed beer in over 50 years, and some smaller businesses like the Speed Shop occupied that space, underutilized area, for a long time. Those businesses have all relocated or chosen to do something else?
Sure. And as the building comes down, we're really excited about the future of reactivating that corner.
[:Absolutely. We also talked about regular park. Lots of great stuff going on there.
[: and look forward to play. in:It's probably the last remaining major improvement that's needed at Regner Park. I'm biased, obviously, but I think Regner Park is one of the best parks in southeastern Wisconsin. It has active recreation, passive recreation, gets tons of views, great music scene. This beach house has been in place for 85 years and hasn't been remodeled to any significance.
And since then, lots of things have changed in the swimming industry in the last 85 years, including the old bathhouse showing up in your Sunday best and coming out in a bathing suit probably isn't utilized very often. So the, the beach house, This is a million and a half project that the community has really stepped up, our foundations, you mentioned EPIC.
completed for swimming season: [: [: [:Anything else great going on right now? I know there's tons of things that are moving, uh, in West Bend.
[:We're really proud of how far our downtown has come. Again, we have some, some room to grow and, and continue to, to grow. gain new businesses, but we really have a successful downtown. That's important to any community, but to a community that has a determined, a well defined downtown and a river and a riverwalk, that's vitally important to them.
I know that it's important to businesses as far as employee recruitment and retention, downtown recreation, and having a place to just Go and chill on a Tuesday afternoon is pretty neat. Our downtown has very few vacancies. The new businesses, we lost very few businesses during COVID and ended up gaining a few and continued to thrive.
So I, again, I think that's a point worth noting that positivity in our downtown is great now and continues to grow and has some room for growth too.
[:Help solidify that and make even more industry and more businesses come to the area.
[: [:We'll be there. We'll, we'll, we'll claim downtown. It's easier to say than just south of downtown. Jay, thanks for coming on. And I'd like to do this again sometime. We'll talk about all the great things going on here in West Bend. And it's great to have you on. I appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.
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