Civil Municipal Magazine - Dec 2023

185 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 LADYSMI TH, WISCONSIN acquire the former Ladysmith Elementary School from the school district, with a plan to create some new housing options. “They had closed the building a few years earlier and the city was able to acquire that building from the school district for a dollar and a swap for some land they desired near the high school,” Christianson recounts. “We put out a request for proposals, found a developer, and over the last few years have been applying for different funds from the WHEDA (Wisconsin Housing & Economic Development Authority) in the form of tax credits. We’re now at the point where the developer has taken ownership of the school of the revenue that accrued from the old Flambeau Mine and using it to buy or renovate older industrial properties that otherwise might have been demoed, bringing them up to current standards, and then leasing or selling them back to the private sector. “One example is Rockwell Automation here in town,” he says. “They lease a building from the city. When we acquired it, it was going to be torn down; it was owned by a firm that was consolidating operations out of state, so the city put money into fixing it up and ended up leasing it to Rockwell.” A little over three years ago, the city was able to