Brown County is giving C. Reiss Co. two weeks to agree to final lease terms for the coal piles storage. Otherwise the parties will have to go to binding arbitration, the county said.
On April 21, the newly elected Brown County Board voted 24-2 after meeting in closed session to move to binding arbitration if C. Reiss doesn’t agree to the board’s last set of terms of the deal by May 4.
County Board members Patrick Evans and Andy Nicholson voted against the resolution.
County Board Chair Patrick Buckley said binding arbitration would act as a “mechanism” to get the deal done.
In February, the County Board approved a 14-point framework for the design of the county-owned former Pulliam site. Now, they are working to finalize the last “legal and technical” bits of the lease to flesh out the details, said Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach.
In a statement April 21, C. Reiss said it “remains committed” to working with the county to finalize the lease.
“The parties exchanged revised lease language as recently as yesterday and continue to work through a limited number of remaining items. Because discussions are ongoing, it would not be appropriate to negotiate those details publicly, but we remain hopeful the lease can be completed promptly,” C. Reiss added.
County officials previously said the goal is to get the former Pulliam site ready for salt storage by 2028 or 2029. Once salt storage is relocated from the Fox River Terminals, existing coal piles near the Mason Street bridge would get slowly depleted and new coal would be stored there.
“What transpired from February to right now is more of the detail of how do we as a landlord work with them as a tenant.” Streckenbach said.
Since February, negotiations have hit “an impasse,” said County Board member Kevin Gannon, so the deal needs to be resolved through binding arbitration.
“There will be a decision made regardless and we’ll all live with it,” Gannon said. “I think we did the city of Green Bay a favor by putting this together. (C. Reiss) can’t walk away and neither can we.”
While the majority of the County Board approved the resolution, Evans worried about what it means moving forward, arguing that wouldn’t set “a good precedent” and they should take more time to discuss and negotiate.
“We’re drawing some sort of line in the sand. It’s not a good way to do business with a company that we’ve been negotiating with,” Evans said.
With C. Reiss leasing 16 acres, the county would also have to find someone to lease the rest of the 37-acre former Pulliam site. Streckenbach said there are interested companies but the county needs to get the site ready and complete work before choosing a tenant and understanding what the site can accommodate, which Streckenbach estimates will be 2029 for now.
How we got here
Contact Benita Mathew at bmathew@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Brown County faces ‘impasse’ with C. Reiss, sets May 4 lease deadline
Reporting by Benita Mathew and Jeff Bollier, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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