Public Accountability • Civic Literacy • Common-Sense Conversations
Vol. 1, Issue 38 | November 21, 2025, A nine-minute read (1903 words)
Janesville’s GM/JATCO Redevelopment: A Fog of Uncertainty and Minimal Disclosure
🔍 Commentary: Janesville’s GM/JATCO Redevelopment Faces Transparency Crossroads
Critical discrepancies in water usage, land ownership, and valuation cloud the city’s $8B data center ambitions.
As Janesville accelerates toward a potential $8 billion data center redevelopment of the former GM/JATCO site, the city’s readiness—and its commitment to public transparency—remain under scrutiny. Despite the City Council’s approval of a non-binding Letter of Intent with Veridian Acquisitions LLC, key facts about competing proposals, environmental impact, and legal ownership remain unresolved.
At the heart of the debate there is a stark discrepancy in projected water usage between two proposals. Contrary to early public impressions, it is Provident’s plan—not Veridian’s—that includes the higher consumption. Provident estimates 80,000 gallons per day per building, with peak usage reaching 310,000 gallons per building. Veridian, by contrast, proposes a closed-loop, air-cooled system averaging just 6,400 gallons per day per building. This distinction is critical for infrastructure planning, sustainability, and public trust.
Equally murky is the legal status of the site’s ownership. The City issued a $3.5 million payment to Commercial Development Company (CDC), the last recorded owner, but CDC has not cashed the check. The matter is now before a compensation condemnation jury, which must determine whether the city’s jurisdictional offer constitutes legal transfer of title. City officials have suggested that “jurisdictional ownership” grants control, but this remains a legal gray area until CDC accepts payment or the court rules definitively.
Meanwhile, Veridian’s proposal includes a $10 million payment to the City—nearly triple the amount offered to CDC. This raises concerns about whether the higher valuation could influence the jury’s deliberations or complicate the city’s legal standing.
Throughout the process, the City has released only minimal public information, citing competitive fairness and procurement confidentiality. While some details have emerged through public meetings and independent reporting, residents and FOIA requestors remain largely in the dark about the competing proposals, environmental risks, and financial implications.
The approved Letter of Intent sets a 60-day window to finalize a Purchase and Sale Agreement, followed by a 120-day due diligence period. Yet without clear title, full disclosure, or public access to negotiation terms, the path forward remains clouded.
🗣️ “This is a letter to learn, not a letter to do.”
— Larry Squire, Janesville City Council Vice President
Editorial Position:
Hypothetically Speaking urges the City of Janesville to embrace a transparent, inclusive process that honors the public’s right to know. The GM/JATCO site holds transformative potential—but without clarity, accountability, and open dialogue, revitalization risks becoming rhetoric rather than reality.
Sources: Initial Data Center Insights – City of Janesville
Economic Development Memorandum – WPR
WTVO News – Janesville Moves Toward $8B Data Center
_____________________________________________________________________________________** 🏗️📜 PLANNING POLICY PROPOSAL: BLUEPRINTS OR BLINDSPOTS? ⚠️🧐
Modern Housing, Old Rules: Janesville’s Zoning Rewrite Still Straddles the Past
From Minneapolis to Missoula, Portland to Pasadena, cities across the country have spent the last decade rewriting their zoning codes to confront a stubborn truth: housing is too scarce, too costly, and too hard to build. Janesville is now attempting its own rewrite—a comprehensive overhaul of Chapter 46. And while the draft shows flashes of modern thinking, it still clings to the very restrictions that helped create the housing shortage in the first place.
🧭 Hypothetically Speaking reviewed the draft through the lens of nationally recognized best practices—HUD, APA, ULI, NLIHC, and the state-level reforms reshaping housing policy from coast to coast. The modern model is clear:
Janesville’s draft gestures toward that vision. But it does not yet deliver it.
🧱 A FRAMEWORK HALF-MODERNIZED
To be fair, there’s progress. The draft introduces:
• 🏘️ Mixed-Residential Housing (MRH) zones
• 🧩 A Planned Development District (PDD) tool
• 🏬 Expanded residential use in business districts
• 📏 Setback averaging and slightly reduced greenspace in R-3
• 🛏️ Boarding houses with management requirements—a nod to shared-living affordability
But these innovations are layered atop a traditional foundation: large minimum lots, wide frontages, deep setbacks, aggressive parking mandates, and generous greenspace minimums. These quiet, technical rules are the real gatekeepers of housing—and they still reflect a 20th-century blueprint: low-density, car-first, spatially separated, and expensive.
📐 LOT SIZES: THE FIRST BARRIER
Janesville’s 5,000-square-foot minimum lot size in R-1, R-2, and R-3 zones blocks the path to small, entry-level homes. Add-on requirements for extra units (3,000 sq. ft. in R-1, 1,300 in R-2, 400 in R-3) quietly tax affordability.
By contrast, modern reforms—like Oregon’s “Middle Housing” law and Minneapolis 2040—have eliminated minimum lot sizes or reduced them to 1,500–2,000 sq. ft.
Janesville’s draft misses that mark entirely.
🏘️ MISSING MIDDLE HOUSING: STILL MISSING
The most efficient, least disruptive way to increase supply? “Missing middle” housing—duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts, courtyard buildings, and co-living platforms.
These forms have nearly vanished due to mid-century zoning. Janesville’s draft does not restore them by-right. Instead, it buries them in conditional-use processes that add delay, cost, and uncertainty—the very things that stop builders from creating naturally affordable homes.
Until missing middle housing is legal wherever detached homes are legal, Janesville will remain structurally short of attainable housing.
📏 SETBACKS, GREENSPACE & ARCHITECTURE: LAYERS OF COST
Some dimensional rules have improved. Others remain frozen in time:
• 🚧 20-foot front setbacks—larger than most reform codes
• ↔️ 6-foot side yards, plus height penalties that shrink usable width
• 🔙 25-foot rear yards—double the infill norm
• 🌳 30% greenspace minimums in R-1 and R-2—among the highest in Wisconsin
• 🏛️ Architectural mandates that could price out modest homes
Each rule seems harmless. Together, they quietly dictate what can be built—and who can afford to live there.
🚗 PARKING: THE MOST EXPENSIVE HIDDEN MANDATE
Nothing in the draft imposes more cost than its parking requirements. Nationally, one parking stall costs:
• $8K–$30K for surface
• Up to $70K for structured
These costs flow directly into rent and sale prices.
The draft’s rule for boardinghouses—2 spaces plus 1 per rooming unit—renders the model nearly impossible. Similar patterns appear across residential districts.
Meanwhile, best practices eliminate parking minimums entirely, replacing them with shared-parking strategies, walkability planning, and market-based demand.
Janesville retains the old model—and affordability suffers for it.
🌟 WHERE THE DRAFT SHOWS PROMISE
To its credit, the city has included tools that could evolve into a modern, flexible framework:
• 🏘️ Mixed-residential districts
• 🏬 Business zones that welcome housing
• 🚶 Shared-parking provisions
• 📏 Setback averaging for gentle infill
These signals should be celebrated—and expanded.
🧭 THE EDITORIAL BOARD’S POSITION
The zoning rewrite is a step forward—but not yet the step Janesville needs.
A modern, affordability-minded code requires more than flexibility layered onto a traditional template. It demands a clear decision:
Right now, the draft stands in the middle of that choice.
Janesville should finish the job.
🏘️ The region’s economic future, workforce stability, and housing affordability depend on it. “Modern Housing, Old Rules: Janesville’s Zoning Rewrite Still Straddles the Past” **
**(It is refreshing to finally get back to real policy issues for even a moment.) RHG
How a letter from a reader inspired an entire Children’s Story for Grown-Ups
A reader from Clinton writes: What’s the deal with the $70 million Obama signed into law with the bill for the cleanup of the Janesville GM site, it still is not completed?
Editor’s Note: We have heard that rumor repeated numerous times through out the years but have never been able to substantiate it. We wanted to put the matter to rest so we enlisted our research staff and conducted an expansive review of the public record. The research yielded certain results within limitations. Summary of Public Funding for Janesville GM Site Redevelopment
There is no public record of a $70 million federal appropriation dedicated solely to the Janesville GM site. The largest documented federal and state contributions include:
• 2010 Old-GM national settlement: ~$210,857 allocated to Janesville from a $773 million nationwide trust.
• EPA brownfields assistance: ~$200,000 for city-level planning (AWP) and ~$400,000 in assessment support across programs.
• WEDC state grant (2018): $500,000 for demolition and abatement.
• Additional state support: ~$800,000 cited by EPA for structure removal and adjacent improvements.
• Local/private funds: Covered the majority of demolition costs, projected at ~$10.2 million.
🕵️♂️💰 THE $70 MILLION THAT WASN’T: A Civic Mystery Wrapped in Silence
From spreadsheets to storytelling, we unpack the myth of federal windfalls and the local habit of hush.
We’ve combed through the archives—federal (EPA, DOJ, GAO), state (WEDC, DNR), RACER/MLC materials, city records, FOIA-accessible EPA summaries, and a decade’s worth of news clippings. And here’s what we found:
Some EPA-reported figures appear in case-study format, which means they’re summarized, not itemized. Full reconciliation would require line-by-line matching with grant award files and receipts—a task for auditors, not editorialists.
So rather than bury you in spreadsheets and decimal points, we offer the latest installment in our now-regular series:
This one’s about a rumor. A big one. A $70 million one. And how it managed to live rent-free in the civic imagination for years—unbothered by facts, unchallenged by officials, and uncorrected by those who knew better
Hypothetically Speaking – The Case of the Missing Seventy Million
A Not-Quite Children’s Story for Grown-Ups Who Still Believe in Mysteries
Illustrated Edition for Adult Readers
Chapter One: The Whisper in the Coffee Cup
The rumor started as so many small-town tales do—over eggs, coffee, and too much imagination.
Nora Meacham, Janesville’s sharpest reporter and undefeated muffin champion, sat in her usual booth when a man at the counter leaned in dramatically.
“Did ya hear?” he whispered. “Obama sent seventy million dollars to clean up the old GM plant—and it vanished. Poof.”
Nora blinked. “Poof?”
“Poof,” he repeated, as if performing a magic trick.
Nora had learned long ago: when adults say “poof,” facts tend to evaporate. Still, a mystery shimmered before her like a shiny new pencil. She flipped open her notebook.
“Missing money… old factory… very mysterious…”
Her day had begun.
Chapter Two: The Castle of Concrete and Questions
Later, Nora stood at the rusting gates of the old GM plant. It towered like a sleeping metal giant, its broken windows watching her with hollow eyes.
“Seventy million dollars would’ve left big footprints,” she murmured. “Cranes. Crews. Noise. Something.”
But the yard was silent.
Weeds waved. Concrete cracked. Wind sighed.
Nora wrote one word in her notebook: Hmm.
Chapter Three: Marty the Keeper of Papers
City Hall smelled like old paper and older coffee. Marty Kelso, keeper of all records and all grumbles, pushed up his glasses when Nora entered.
“You chasing rumors again?” he asked.
“Investigating,” she corrected.
Marty sighed the sigh of a man who had explained the same thing 4,762 times.
He stacked files before her. “EPA gave two hundred thousand for planning in 2013. A bit more for assessments. State tossed in half a million later. All small. All public.”
Nora tapped her notebook. “What about the GM bankruptcy trust?”
Marty hauled out a binder so heavy it could anchor a boat.
“Wisconsin got two hundred ten thousand,” he said. “Not seventy million. Not seven million. Not even one million.”
Nora frowned. The mystery deepened. And there was also not a single Non-Disclosure Agreement to be found in the files either!
Chapter Four: Barstool Detectives
At Wally’s Tavern, the retired GM workers gathered like well-worn encyclopedias—full of knowledge, full of dust, and full of opinions.
“They said the feds were gonna fix everything,” Wally told her, staring into his beer. “Clean it up. Bring jobs. Bring hope.”
“Who said seventy million specifically?” Nora asked.
Wally shrugged. “Some politician at some meeting. Or someone who heard it from someone who heard it on the radio.”
“So,” Nora said, “a rumor fed by hope?”
“Hope,” Wally admitted, “inflates numbers like balloons.”
Chapter Five: Moonlit Clues
That night, Nora returned to the plant. The moon cast long bars of light across the concrete, making the factory look like a crime scene drawn by an artist who loved dramatic shadows.
“Let’s see,” she whispered. “Small EPA grants… modest state grants… a national bankruptcy fund mostly spent elsewhere… and no trace of seventy million anywhere.”
She snapped her notebook shut.
“A ghost budget,” she said. “For a ghost factory.”
The wind rustled in agreement.
“Let’s see,” she whispered. “Small EPA grants… modest state grants… a national bankruptcy fund mostly spent elsewhere… and no trace of seventy million anywhere.”
She snapped her notebook shut.
“A ghost budget,” she said. “For a ghost factory.”
The wind rustled in agreement.
Chapter Six: The Truth Hits Print
The next morning; The Mystery of the Missing Millions splashed across the front page.
Some readers cheered.
Some scoffed.
Some insisted she must have missed the secret vault beneath City Hall where the money slept on stacks of golden invoices.
People love a mystery—even when the truth is simpler.
That evening, Nora walked past the plant again. A soft whisper drifted through its broken vents:
Nobody is coming.
And that was when the final piece clicked.
Chapter Seven: The Moral at the Gate
The people of Janesville had waited.
Waited for Washington.
Waited for Madison.
Waited for GM.
Waited for someone—anyone—to fix the problem.
They waited so long that rumor stepped in and pretended to be reality.
Nora closed her notebook and faced the empty factory.
“Sometimes,” she said, “the real missing thing isn’t money. It’s action.”
And so the moral of the story—the one the whole town needed—was this:
Never rely on someone else to do the work you must do yourself. 🤫 THE HABIT OF HUSH
This could have been avoided. Entirely. All it would’ve taken was one public official, standing tall, saying plainly: “This is an urban legend, it never happened. There never was such an appropriation.”
But that didn’t happen. Because in Janesville, we don’t do proactive. We do polite. We do passive. We do “wait and see.” And when it comes to public communication, we often forget who the real bosses are: the residents.
___________________________________________
☕ Community Spotlight: Havana Coffee
If you are looking for a place to reflect on your civic journey—or just fuel up before a council meeting—stop by Havana Coffee at 1250 Milton Avenue. It is a true Janesville gem, where espresso meets engagement.
With hearty food, warm service, and a strong commitment to local journalism, Havana Coffee proudly supports the Rock County Civics Academy and all who believe in informed participation.
We are grateful to Daniela and her team for creating a space where ideas percolate and conversations matter.
⚖️ Welcome Nowlan Law Firm and Attorney Tim Lindau
We also extend our thanks to Attorney Tim Lindau and the Nowlan Law Firm for their support of civic education and democratic renewal. Tim’s encouragement—and his belief in the power of our mission.
Together, with partners like Havana and Nowlan, we are building a culture of engagement that honors both tradition and transformation.
HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING: Where ideas meet action—and citizens shape the future.
What if transparency was the norm, not the exception?
What if civic engagement became Rock County’s defining strength?
Every movement begins when someone decides “now is the time.”
That someone could be you.
🪩 A CALL TO LEADERSHIP
Leadership isn’t about ego—it’s about service.
It’s showing up, listening deeply, and acting with purpose.
Three ways to begin:
• Volunteer with a civic group
• Serve on a local board or commission
• Run for public office and lead the change.
“If not you, who? If not now, when?” — Hillel the Elder
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FINAL THOUGHT
Democracy is a skill—one that strengthens with practice.
Stay curious. Stay engaged. Stay connected.
Because the next chapter of Rock County’s story is being written—right now.
©2025 Rock County Civics Academy
Produced in partnership with the Rock County Civics Academy to promote open dialogue, ethical leadership, and civic participation across Wisconsin’s heartland. Illustrations by Sketchy Bubbles MacInkwell. Published by CSI of Wisconsin, Inc. P. O. Box 8082, Janesville WI 53547-8082
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