Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz

A podcast about positive things happening in and around Washington County, Wisconsin

New Developments in West Bend with Jay Shambeau

• Transcript

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  [00:00:00] Fuzz Martin: Well, hello there. Thank you for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. I am he, Fuzz Martin. Thank you. And welcome to the show. We’re on the eighth official episode, and today we’re getting a sneak peek into all of the great things going on in West Bend. Because on today’s show, we’re speaking with West Bend City Administrator Jay Shambeau.

  Now I didn’t ask him during the interview, but he did assure me after the interview that barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Seventh Avenue construction in West Bend will be done in October, and selfishly, as a guy who works off Seventh Avenue, and with Highway 45 North on ramps being shut down, I was most certainly happy to hear that, because that means I can take D up to 45.

  So, here are 15 minutes on the great things going on in West Bend. With Jay Shambeau. So

  Jay, for those of us like me who pretend to know what a city administrator role is, but only do so so that you don’t think that we don’t know, what do city administrators do?

  [00:01:46] Jay Shambeau: I would say at its simplest level I’d describe my role as somebody who helps run the city. The city administrator is the go between the mayor and city council and staff at a, at an organizational level, and And from a position wise, my, my job is to help implement the policies.

  I work closely with the department heads at the city level, implement the policies that the city council and mayor set on an annual and organizational wide basis. So we perform all of the, the duties of service industry, such as a government organization does. And as the, Chief Appointed Officer, not the Chief Elected Officer within the city, um, I help carry out those duties.

  So it’s a hired

  [00:02:31] Fuzz Martin: role, not an elected role, and you’re involved in a lot of different things. I’ve seen you out at different Chamber events, you’re on the Chamber Board, and people ask you about things regarding infrastructure to new business to operations. and Parks and all that

  [00:02:52] Jay Shambeau: stuff. Yeah. The way we’re structured in West Bend, all of the department heads to me, okay, there are a few department heads that have boards like the library board and police and fire commission for police chief and fire chief, but I’m actively involved in all aspects of the city of West Bend and I am present in the community.

  I enjoy being out and about at city and community events. Certainly.

  [00:03:15] Fuzz Martin: How long have you been in this role at West Bend? Five years. Five years, okay. Well, we’re glad to have you, and thanks for coming on the show today. Thanks for having me. Over those five years, we’ve seen a ton of great changes going on and improvements happening in West Bend.

  There’s something always going on, which is great, and at a city of this size, kind of expected, but our agency, Epic Creative, has been involved with a number of Projects along the way in some sort of fashion, you know, helping with idea generation at the Riverwalk to, you know, small sponsorship role at the, the Regner Park Beach House.

  But from all of those things going on in the city, what projects are you most excited about right now? Yeah,

  [00:03:54] Jay Shambeau: maybe I’ll start with, with those two and the park system itself. The, there, there is a lot of positive energy within the city right now. We’ve accomplished a lot and we have a lot to do. So it’s still a work in progress for sure.

  And lots of excitement for the community to have about the future of West Bend as well. Some of the projects were existing, that are existing and that we’re working on is the Riverwalk, as you mentioned. Um, thanks for the help with the design of that. The design for signage and the future of how that looks has been great.

  It’s one of the few projects that we have worked on that’s been loved by all. The Eastside River Walk that was completed in 2018 is, is a project that’s just unrivaled in my opinion regarding how positive it has been viewed in the community. People love it, people use it, and we’re trying to mirror that now on the Westside.

  So the Westside River Walk has been in the works design wise for a couple of years. We’re still finishing up the design. At the same time, in 2021, we’re completing the. Utility infrastructure installation, that’s almost complete. You’ve seen a lot of activity in the, in the backs of the buildings on Main Street.

  Working on that and prepping the utilities were a mess of a hundred years of spiderweb utilities over. Patch this here, you know, stick this right out there. When the markings come, came through before we started the project, it was. Pretty interesting and a little scary. That project is, it literally took the entire year to get completed.

  And now we get to look forward to first phase construction 2022. And that will be from the Pocket Park Bridge, um, south of Veterans. We’re going out to bid yet this year. and anticipate building that phase in 2022 as I mentioned. Concurrently to that, because of the HKS brewery project, the district that’s coming in, that TIF district is able to generate enough funds to fund a Riverwalk improvement in front of their building.

  So we’re calling that phase four. Okay. And that’ll, We’ll be kind of concurrent with phase two, uh, Riverwalk construction. So in front of the HKS building and all the way to the skate park, if people know where that’s located, that’ll get a facelift. And then the last phase, the one remaining phase behind the, the formerly known as Ziegler building and the BMO building, that Riverwalk is, we’re calling phase three construction.

  And that’s scheduled for 2023, and again, the funds, in large part, for that project are being generated by the TIF, the new district.

  [00:06:20] Fuzz Martin: Uh, looking at the east side of the Riverwalk, before the project began, you know, people might have said, well, you know, what are you planning to do here? How is this going to affect?

  But looking at seeing both sides of it now, it’s tremendous how, Awesome the Riverwalk looks on the east side, and I’m very excited for what that’s going to do for the city once the west side is complete. Both for businesses, for recreation, just the entire vibe of the city there

  [00:06:53] Jay Shambeau: is going to be improved.

  Yeah, it’s a stark difference now. And completing the east side really shined a bright light on the failing west side. And I totally agree. We’re anticipating businesses refacing some component of their business towards the Riverwalk. Some are already talking about upgrading the backs of their buildings and calling them the fronts of their buildings.

  Right. That’ll be exciting.

  [00:07:12] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, very, very much so. And speaking of the district, I was amazed, I didn’t realize how far that went back and then yesterday driving through I saw someone taking a sledgehammer to a door jam at the building, I think the RT Speed Shop used to be in that, at that end of it. And I was surprised, I thought it was that little chunk that had been open but it’s,

  [00:07:33] Jay Shambeau: it’s not.

  Yeah, that’s a sneaky big parcel. The Speed Shop, as you mentioned, has been there for 40 years. So it’s known as a brewery, but they haven’t brewed beer in over 50 years, and some smaller businesses like the Speed Shop occupied that space, underutilized area, for a long time. Those businesses have all relocated or chosen to do something else?

  Sure. And as the building comes down, we’re really excited about the future of reactivating that corner.

  [00:08:00] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. Um, I’m looking forward to what that does to other areas then too, seeing that that gets built up and then you see that that spread of innovation and growth and, uh, upgrades which are gr important to futurizing a city.

  Absolutely. We also talked about regular park. Lots of great stuff going on there.

  [00:08:20] Jay Shambeau: Yeah, two of the major components yet to complete at Regner Park were Carl Cusfield and revitalizing the Beach House and we’re very close to the completion of Carl Cusfield. That was a long process, one that we worked closely with the West Bend Baseball Association, the WBBA, Uh, their organization’s been great to work with.

  They found a vendor to create this synthetic infield and a revitalized grandstand, um, new turf outfield, actually moving the fence outside, outside of the, um, square board. So it’s a great facility. It looks awesome already. It’s about ready to be completed and look forward to play. in 2022. The Beach House is the next up project.

  It’s probably the last remaining major improvement that’s needed at Regner Park. I’m biased, obviously, but I think Regner Park is one of the best parks in southeastern Wisconsin. It has active recreation, passive recreation, gets tons of views, great music scene. This beach house has been in place for 85 years and hasn’t been remodeled to any significance.

  And since then, lots of things have changed in the swimming industry in the last 85 years, including the old bathhouse showing up in your Sunday best and coming out in a bathing suit probably isn’t utilized very often. So the, the beach house, This is a million and a half project that the community has really stepped up, our foundations, you mentioned EPIC.

  So we have this cool program where businesses can jump in at a beach bum level and really help get over the edge. So we’re still, we’re still in active fundraising. We have bid the project. We are looking to start construction for phase one yet this year and hope to have it in place, the first phase completed for swimming season 2022.

  [00:10:07] Fuzz Martin: Everything you do in your role is in phases. Does that spill over into your, your life at home? Do you have like, we’re going to do this first phase of the home remodel project and then

  [00:10:16] Jay Shambeau: Yeah, probably to some extent.

  [00:10:18] Fuzz Martin: Uh, this phase of this weekend, we’re going to clean the garage and then in phase two, we’re going to take a nap.

  Anything else great going on right now? I know there’s tons of things that are moving, uh, in West Bend.

  [00:10:29] Jay Shambeau: Yeah, we, I can talk a little bit about the downtown. I, I I would put our downtown in the restaurant scene, the economic impact, the activity, the, just the lack of vacant spaces against most municipalities.

  We’re really proud of how far our downtown has come. Again, we have some, some room to grow and, and continue to, to grow. gain new businesses, but we really have a successful downtown. That’s important to any community, but to a community that has a determined, a well defined downtown and a river and a riverwalk, that’s vitally important to them.

  I know that it’s important to businesses as far as employee recruitment and retention, downtown recreation, and having a place to just Go and chill on a Tuesday afternoon is pretty neat. Our downtown has very few vacancies. The new businesses, we lost very few businesses during COVID and ended up gaining a few and continued to thrive.

  So I, again, I think that’s a point worth noting that positivity in our downtown is great now and continues to grow and has some room for growth too.

  [00:11:37] Fuzz Martin: Well, as a business that’s, has some room for growth. We’re technically downtown, I think. We’re downtown adjacent, at least, but from a business standpoint, where we’re recruiting people to come here, it is important to us, and we love to see the, the growth, love that there’s very little vacancy down there, and I think the improvements that are being made will only be.

  Help solidify that and make even more industry and more businesses come to the area.

  [00:12:05] Jay Shambeau: We’ve seen a significant uptick in building value in this past 12 months for our downtown and I think I agree with you that the improvements made are helping with that. We definitely claim EPIC as a downtown. Okay, yeah,

  [00:12:18] Fuzz Martin: we’ll take it.

  We’ll be there. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll claim downtown. It’s easier to say than just south of downtown. Jay, thanks for coming on. And I’d like to do this again sometime. We’ll talk about all the great things going on here in West Bend. And it’s great to have you on. I appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.

  Well, there we go. Thank you as always for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. If you want to subscribe, open up Apple podcasts. Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, search for Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz and click on that big ol subscribe button. Heck, there’s a good chance you’re listening in one of those apps right now, right?

  You could also follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by going to the handle FifteenWithFuzz. Or you can go to our website, my website, 15withfuzz. com. I have new episodes each week and I really appreciate you listening. Thanks so much. And we’ll talk to you again very soon on 15 minutes with fuzz.