Housing plan for vacant Cormier Road lot includes parking for Rockers games, concerts

ASHWAUBENON — A plan to build 152 apartments on a vacant lot on Cormier Road also includes almost 300 parking spaces for events held at a nearby stadium and a popular concert venue.

Green Bay Rockers, Epic Event Center and Festival Foods owner Mark Skogen on Feb. 8 purchased the former Green Bay Packaging folding carton division site at 750 Cormier Road, in Ashwaubenon, under the name Cormier Property Partners LLC. Green Bay Packaging in fall 2022 demolished the buildings on the 7.8-acre site.

This month, Cormier Property Partners requested Ashwaubenon village officials rezone the site and approve a site plan that includes a five-story apartment building with first-floor retail space, 152 apartments, a second-floor rooftop space for tenants, improved pedestrian amenities, a stormwater pond and extra parking spaces.

Plans call for two, five-story towers of apartments that will be connected by the first floor spaces and the second-floor rooftop patio. Cormier Property Partners indicated it plans to build the southern tower and the parking lot first, then the northern tower in a second phase.

The site plan includes more than 560 parking spaces:

• 84 indoor parking spaces for apartment tenants
• 146 surface spaces for tenants
• 43 spaces for retail/commercial users and
• 295 event parking spaces

The 295 event parking spaces included in plans would offer parking across Cormier Road from Epic Event Center and just south of Capital Credit Union Park, where the Rockers play.

The mixed-use project also would add more housing units in the village and improve connections along Holmgren Way between Bay Park Square mall and the Lambeau Field/Resch Expo stadium district, said Aaron Schuette, the village’s community development director.

“The proposal accomplishes a couple goals for us: It adds to our housing stock here in the community and it will create that more urban feel that we’ve been planning for along Holmgren Way and it provides nice, close parking for Capital Credit Union Park.”

Ashwaubenon plans pedestrian improvements on Cormier Road

The parking spaces will accommodate the increase in residents, events at Capital Credit Union Park and concerts at Epic Event Center. But all of that also adds up to more pedestrian activity along Holmgren Way west of the vacant lot and on Cormier Road south of the lot.

Schuette said the village plans to add a mid-block crosswalk on Cormier Road equipped with rapid-flashing beacons to improve the pedestrian connections between Epic, the redevelopment site and Capital Credit Union Park.

He said the mid-block crosswalk will be the village’s responsibility, not Cormier Project Partners LLC’s and that it will likely be done later through the village’s normal budgeting process.

Ashwaubenon expects a request for financial assistance

The village committees that already reviewed and voted on the proposal focus more on the minutiae of site plans and how the rezoning might impact what the property can be used for in the future.

Schuette said the village expects Cormier Project Partners to request financial assistance from the village to help address project costs, but details of how much or the terms were not included in documents provided to the Site Plan Review Committee or Plan Commission.

Neenah-based developer working with Allouez also involved in Cormier Road site

Cormier Project Partners shares an address with the Festival Foods headquarters in Onalaska, but Skogen is not the only name involved you might recognize.

Site plan and rezoning requests submitted to the village list Derek Liebhauser, of Neenah-based Spark Development, as the contact for Cormier Project Partners.

The village of Allouez in March selected Liebauser as the second developer to work out a plan to redevelop a vacant South Webster Avenue strip mall that the village bought in 2020 .

When can I have my say on Cormier Project Partners’ proposal?

The Ashwaubenon Village Board still needs to approve the rezoning request and site plans.

The board’s expected to do so when it meets next, at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 23.

Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com . Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier .

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Housing plan for vacant Cormier Road lot includes parking for Rockers games, concerts