GREEN BAY – The Green Bay region is closer than ever to reaching a deal to relocate the C. Reiss Co. coal piles storage from its longtime home on prime, riverfront property.
The lease terms the Brown County Board will consider Wednesday are the result of years of collaboration and negotiations between Brown County, the city of Green Bay and C. Reiss Co.
The terms call for C. Reiss to move its coal storage to a 14.5-acre chunk of the county-owned former J.P. Pulliam power plant site where the Port of Green Bay wants to expand ship deliveries. C. Reiss would pay the county $3.7 million over the first 25 years of the lease and would have the option to extend the lease by another 50 years.
The lease terms are not quite the end of the line, as there would still be formal agreements to work out and execute.
But County Board member Dan Theno said Wednesday’s meeting will still be an important one in the years-long effort. “This might be our last opportunity to figure out how we can get the coal piles out of the central metro area,” Theno said. “This is a high-stakes, really important issue not only for the county, but for the broader community.”
Coal mounds glow in the sun as Gov. Tony Evers visits Green Bay Water Utility on March 3, 2022, in Green Bay.
The lease terms have raised concerns among some Brown County Board members, as evidenced by a committee’s nearly 90-minute closed session discussion of the terms on Monday night. Adding to the stakes of Wednesday’s night’s county meeting, C. Reiss said on Tuesday that any change to the current terms would be interpreted as a rejection.
The opportunity also raises some common questions in the community that relate to everything from the current proposal to more general queries about coal use and C. Reiss.
Here’s what we’ve been able to find out based on interviews with C. Reiss officials, local government officials, meeting minutes and other sources.
The Green Bay Press-Gazette urged the community as far back as January 2003 to relocate the coal piles off prime riverfront property as downtown revitalization took root.
Why do Green Bay and Brown County want to move the coal piles?
The coal storage operation harkens back to Green Bay’s industrial past and the use of the Fox River as the main method to move bulk commodities like coal and timber in and out of northeastern Wisconsin.
The region has developed and grown since the 1960s, though, and the 35-plus acres C. Reiss occupies is now viewed as prime, riverfront land that could be redeveloped to generate millions of dollars in new property value and economic activity. Additionally, people who live near the piles have long complained of blowing dust, health issues and the general appearance of the site.
The community lacked a suitable site where the coal storage could move to and C. Reiss’ prior ownership was not so interested in having the conversation. Those both changed after a new company bought C. Reiss in the 2010s and the county bought the Pulliam site in 2021. The city, county and C. Reiss have been meeting since August 2022 to discuss the relocation effort.
What concerns the Brown County Board about this lease?
Most, but not all county supervisors and county staff have declined or not responded to the Press-Gazette’s interview requests regarding the lease terms. It’s made it hard to know specifically what concerns anyone.
In general, Theno said he thinks every member of the County Board backs relocating the coal piles, but some members have concerns about some of the terms, like the length of the lease and whether the current coal storage site will be redeveloped.
There’s likely to be a variety of issues and questions individual supervisors want to discuss regarding the proposed terms. That’s why the County Board on Wednesday will have the option to go into closed session to discuss the topic among themselves.
What is C. Reiss’ view?
When addressing the Green Bay City Council on Tuesday night, the CEO of C Reiss, Keith Haselhoff, said that if anything changes before Wednesday’s County Board meeting, they’ll take it as a rejection of the deal that they perceive as “the bottom of the line.
“We’ve compromised a lot in the past few months,” Haselhoff said.
The C. Reiss Coal Co. offices, 115 W. Mason St., in Green Bay.
Why does C. Reiss want a 75-year lease?
It goes back to the company’s long history in Green Bay and northeastern Wisconsin and the desire to continue to operate a bulk commodities business for the long term.
The lease terms originally gave C. Reiss 25 years plus three 25-year extension options, for 100 years total. The company recently agreed to reduce the maximum term to 75 years as a concession.
The company wants to continue its bulk commodities business for as long as there’s a demand and market for coal in the region. The move to Pulliam and potential redevelopment of C. Reiss’ existing coal storage site would end the grandfathered use there, so the company wants to make sure it can operate in Green Bay for another 120 years.
The C. Reiss Coal Company office building in Sheboygan was built in 1912 and put into service by 1913. Today the building has been converted into condos. C. Reiss Co. was founded in Sheboygan in the 1880s.
What happens if the county votes ‘no’ on the lease terms?
It could result in the loss of at least $15 million in state-awarded grant funds, plus possibly another $10.1 million federal grant, which together represent the bulk of the $30 million the community secured to develop the Pulliam site into a new port facility.
The $15 million state grant was funded using American Rescue Plan Act funding that requires recipients to allocate the money to a project by Dec. 31, 2024. The $10.1 million federal Port Infrastructure Development Grant was funded via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Both grant applications also specifically referenced relocating the coal storage to the Pulliam site.
Theno said a “no” vote on the lease could close the window on the region’s chance to relocate the coal piles out of the central city.
“I think this might be our last kick at the can,” he said.
Did you say C. Reiss has been in Green Bay for 120 years?
The C. Reiss Co., founded by Clemens Reiss in Sheboygan in 1888, first established a coal yard on the property south of Mason Street in the early 1900s and has operated a bulk commodities storage facility there ever since. Its long-term use of the site for coal storage predates environmental regulations or land use plans, so its use remains grandfathered for the site.
C. Reiss now is a subsidiary of family-owned Robindale Energy, which also owns the Fox River Terminal just north of the Interstate 43 Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge.
What would happen to the existing coal piles site?
Negotiations between the city, county and C. Reiss at one time envisioned a joint redevelopment plan: Green Bay would work with C. Reiss to develop the northernmost 10 acres of the coal piles site into a downtown-style development with a mix of commercial and residential uses. The county would work with C. Reiss to develop the remaining portion of the site into industrial and/or port uses.
But the current lease terms that go to the County Board on Wednesday do not include any agreements or terms regarding what will happen to C. Reiss’ more than 35-acre site south of Mason Street.
It’s not clear whether the parties will reach any agreement regarding what happens to the current coal site.
Coal is not C. Reiss’ only bulk commodity
While we’re talking a lot about coal, it is not the majority of C. Reiss Co.’s business right now.
The company’s business is actually split fairly evenly among three bulk commodities: coal, salt and aggregate materials.
What still uses coal in the Green Bay or northeastern Wisconsin area?
Companies such as Georgia-Pacific and Green Bay Packaging in the last decade have traded coal-fired boilers for cleaner-burning natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Those changes led to a significant reduction in coal deliveries into the Port of Green Bay, but port tonnage figures show coal shipments continue to arrive each year.
The company said a variety of local businesses still use coal to generate heat or power for their industrial operations, but declined to provide any specific businesses. The U.S. Energy Information Administration coal use fact sheet provides some insight on possible users though, noting coal remains a popular fuel source in the paper, concrete, steel and power industries.
Additionally, C. Reiss would not likely ship coal into Green Bay if there wasn’t a demand for it.
Will we see C. Reiss move the current coal piles from the Mason Street site to the Pulliam site?
No. Shed the vision of a barge pulling up to the C. Reiss site to be loaded with coal for a short trip down the Fox River.
Instead, what would likely happen is that C. Reiss would shift coal deliveries from Mason Street to the Pulliam site.
What you’d see as a result is the piles south of the Mason Street bridge slowly dwindle until they were gone and the gradual accumulation of new piles at the Pulliam site.
What’s the big whoop about redeveloping the coal piles site?
More than 35 acres of riverfront property could generate a whole heck of a lot more in property value and property tax revenue for the city, the county, the Green Bay School District and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.
The C. Reiss site consists of two parcels, a 13.9-acre parcel on State Street valued at $865,000 and a 21.3-acre valued at $2.1 million for a total of almost $3 million, according to city property records.
For comparison, the city just transferred a 1.4-acre downtown surface parking lot to a Milwaukee developer that just started construction on a $55 million high-rise projected to add $38 million in new property value to tax rolls. And Metreau, a riverfront market-rate apartment building that occupies about half an acre, currently has an assessed value of $12.7 million and generated $262,000 in property taxes for the city, county, school district and technical college.
An overhead image of the Pulliam Power Plant property. The land Brown County bought from Wisconsin Public Service is highlighted in yellow.
How would the port be expanded?
The port, which is operated by Brown County, consists of 16 terminals up and down the Fox River where commodities like salt, gasoline and construction materials arrive by ship for use in communities across northeastern Wisconsin.
The Pulliam site offers the port an opportunity to not only relocate the coal piles but to add another terminal, this one owned by Brown County rather than a private company, in order to increase the volume and type of freight coming in to the Port of Green Bay.
The full scope of improvements called for crews to:
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Dredge the Fox River along the site and install a steel dock wall to enable ships to access the site.
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Fill in the docking slip on the Pulliam site.
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Build a stormwater detention basin.
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Add mooring facilities and crane pads for port operations.
Not getting the $25 million grant this summer forced the county to scale back those plans to fit the roughly $30 million secured for the effort.
Contact business reporter Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: What to know about the Green Bay coal piles ahead of vote to relocate
