GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Nicolet Neighborhood Association says it has now collected about 170 signatures opposing a proposed boat launch in the area.
Brown County parks officials say a new boat launch is needed to create another safe harbor for boaters and to ease capacity at other launches.
Brown County is waiting to see if it will receive state grant money to buy the long-vacant Eagles Nest Supper Club on Nicolet Drive. It would turn it into a public boat launch.
“We feel it will interfere with the residential quality of our neighborhood,” said Joe Morgan of the Nicolet Neighborhood Association. “It’s right in the middle of the neighborhood and the homes in our neighborhood, the range is $400,000 to $1 million.”
RELATED: Improvements planned for Brown County boat launchBrown County Assistant Park Director Matt Kriese says the grant would cover about half of the purchase price of the Eagles Nest. The county isn’t sure where the rest of the money would come from, but supervisors at Thursday’s Education & Recreation meeting seemed to agree little to no taxpayer money should be used on the project.
“Typically, with boat landings, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, at one boat landing,” said Kriese.
Kriese says right now there are capacity issues at the county’s three boat launches. He says a boat launch at the Eagles Nest property could also provide another option for a safe harbor when storms hit.
“If we look at Winnebago and I can’t say whether these are developed or not, they have 19 boat launches and triple the amount of square miles of water,” said Kriese. “That leaves us pretty far behind to Winnebago’s system.”
William Acker, who lives near the Eagles Nest property, says he’s been tracking numbers at the Metro Boat Launch, near Bay Beach, to verify whether there are capacity issues. He claims he’s been there every day the past few weeks and the highest capacity has reached for boat trailers in the parking lot is 22 percent.
“We would rather see the property turned into a condominium development,” Morgan said of the Eagles Nest property. “We think that will happen when the owners of the property realize the real market value of the property.”
All the public speakers at this meeting were against the boat launch, Supervisor Tom Sieber remains undecided, but says he has heard from fishermen who want the boat launch.
“Spring time especially there is a lot of congestion up at the Bay Shore boat launch, so they just want another opportunity to get out on the bay, do some fishing, do some recreation,” said Sieber.
The county expects to hear back on its grant application this fall.
