GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Renard Island is a 55 acres property near the mouth of the Fox River and Bay Beach Amusement Park.
The island was a place to get rid of toxic PCB sediment, dredged from the bay harbor until the late 90’s but it could soon be the home of Green Bay’s next tourist attraction.
Brown County port director Dean Haen tells FOX 11 the end-use plan offers some realistic goals.
“It’s perfectly safe for health and human use deemed by the DNR and that was one of the important pieces of us getting to this end-use plan as well.”
At Monday’s Brown County Harbor Commission meeting, the finalized master plans were announced to transform the island.
Last year, the public gave their input on the type of island it should be.
From an Eco-Island with a lot of natural habitat to an Active island. The company that came up with the design said people overwhelmingly chose the plan that offers a lot of activities.
Haen says the finalized plan for Renard Island includes a boardwalk, festival plaza space, fishing piers, trails, a boater beach, and a marina.
“This island is an effort to get our community to the water that we sit upon.”
Haen said now they’re working on getting investors to back some of the plans for the island. The total cost is estimated to be $22 million dollars.
“The boardwalk and the marina are a significant part of the whole cost.”
He says they don’t need every penny to start working.
“Start off with some walking trails and fishing piers and eventually work our way up to the marina and boardwalk and those things, that’s the most likely implementation of the plan.”
Some concerns about the final plan were brought up during Monday’s meeting.
Green Bay Parks Director Dan Ditscheit tells FOX he’s concerned about the boater beach idea.
“The city will be building a swimming beach along the shoreline of the bay at bay beach amusement park, so whatever we do we don’t want to end up with two swimming beaches there.”
The city and the county say they plan to work together to make sure they’re not offering competing services.
The island’s success will rely heavily on traffic from Bay Beach. The plan shows different ways to get to Renard Island from Bay Beach including a possible connection bridge and a zipline. The proposal includes parking for up to 300 cars.
The final plan still needs full county board approval. That is expected to take place Wednesday.
