Sawall to break ground in 2013 on Mammoth Springs complex
No one sure how to move the Bug Line trail
By Kelly Smith
Posted: Dec. 24, 2012, Living Sussex Sun
Developer Art Sawall presented architectural plans at the Dec. 20, 2012 Plan Commission meeting for his commercial-residential development Mammoth Springs. He plans to break ground in spring on the apartments. The one- to two-bedroom apartments will range in size from about 750- to 800-square-feet and rent for between $900 and $1,300 a month depending on amenities and the number of bedrooms, according to the plans.
Village of Sussex – Art Sawall, a Brookfield computer software creator and real estate developer, did not allow the year’s first big snow storm or a busy Plan Commission agenda, to distract him from his mission at Village Hall last week.
He unveiled to the Plan Commission on Thursday, Dec. 20 his long-awaited plans for the mixed-use residential, retail and commercial development. The development site is at cannery corners or the corner of Waukesha Avenue and Main Street, which Sawall has redubbed Mammoth Springs.
Since he purchased the former cannery company site – apparently with cash – about two years ago, he has become somewhat of a mysterious figure around Village Hall. While some village officials and residents have heard or read about him, they had not met the man.
“Until tonight, I wasn’t sure he really existed,” said one village official who would prefer to remain anonymous.
With his engineer, architect, and banker in tow, the congenial Sawall brought big picture boards and architectural drawings illustrating the three-story apartment buildings with underground parking that overlook a quarry pond that used to be one of the village’s most popular swimming holes.
The one- to two-bedroom apartments will range in size from about 750- to 800-square-feet and rent for between $900 and $1,300 a month depending on amenities and the number of bedrooms, according to the plans.
After the first two apartments are built and occupied, Sawall says he will build two buildings for retail or office use. After those buildings are completed, additional structures are planned but always with the strategy that the apartments come first and then the commercial buildings.
“In today’s market, that is the only way its works. If I tried to build the retail first, I would have to give the buildings back to my banker,” he quipped.
Sawall and village officials admit they have yet to figure out how to remove the biggest obstacle to the development; the Bug Line Recreation Trail which runs nearly through the center of the property.
According to Sawall’s plan, the trail will be moved off the property to the west and south of the project site. A private path winding its way around the apartments and the quarry pond will eventually connect to the Bug Line.
However, the details of how to move the trail in a manner that satisfies federal, state and county authorities has yet to be worked out, according to Village Administrator Jeremy Smith.
Sawall said the construction on some of the apartment and retail buildings can begin while he and the various agencies try to figure out a way to move the trail.
Smith was asked why the plan was presented to the commission without first resolving how to move the trail.
“Because the developer wanted to present it,” Smith responded.
Sawall was asked if it was smart strategy to present the plan to the commission in a December meeting with a large agenda including a controversial development project at highways 164 and K.
“I didn’t want to wait until January. I want to break ground in the spring,” he said.
Although Sawall made his fortune creating computer software, he comes from a family of real estate contractors and developers. He has invested in another high-end apartment complex in Wauwatosa.
A click on Craig’s List lead him to the cannery property. He found a Brookfield duplex listed for sale through the online classified ad service. He thought it would be good investment and contacted the real estate broker.
The broker told him the property had been sold but suggested Sawall look at cannery corners in Sussex. Sawall, 54, has some familiarity with Sussex. Quad Tech, which is part of Quad/Graphics, was one of his first customers when founded the company ECT International which created commercial software and was later sold to Bentley Systems of Pennsylvania.
No date has been set for when Sawall will make a more detailed presentation to the commission and apply for a conditional use permit.
Commission members reacted favorably to his conceptual proposal with most of the questions focusing on how he would design underground parking and why he wanted apartments built before retail buildings.
Art Sawall proposes Bug Line Recreational Trail reroute
Seeking approval to move trail to north edge of property
By Kelly Smith
Posted: Jan. 8, 2013, Living Sussex Sun
NEW BUG LINE ROUTE – The red line depicts a new route for the Bug Line Recreational Trail proposed by Brookfield entrepreneur Art Sawall. His plan would take the trail across the Main Street-Waukesha Avenue intersection and proceed west along a side walk on Sawall’s land and then turn south to meet up with the exist trail as it enters the former Mammoth Springs Cannery site. Sawall wants to the move the exiting trail (indicated by green line) away from the center of the former cannery site which he has purchased and plans to develop.
Village of Sussex – Brookfield entrepreneur Arthur Sawall has purchased – and demolished – the Quality Welding shop at N63 W23369 Main St. in hopes of clearing a path for the relocation of the Bug Line Recreation Trail. By moving the trail he can begin development of multi-use residential and commercial complex on the old Mammoth Springs cannery site at Main Street and Waukesha Avenue.
Sawall purchased the Quality Welding property about two weeks ago and began demolishing the building almost immediately. He said one of the reasons he bought the land is because it provides a potential path for rerouting the Bug Line.
The Bug Line is a county recreational trail on a former railroad right-of-way which extends 11 miles from the Village of Merton east through the Village of Sussex to the Village of Menomonee Falls. The rail right-of-way extends through the center of the cannery once providing transportation for cannery products and supplies.
Sawall wants to move the trail a few hundred feet from the center of his property to the north edge of the property on a sidewalk on the south side of Main Street.
Sawall, in an exclusive interview with the Sussex Sun, said he will propose to federal, state and county officials that the relocation of the trail would begin north of the Main Street and Waukesha Avenue intersection. The trail would proceed south across the intersection and turn west along the south side of Main Street following a sidewalk on his property.
Near the west edge of his property, the trail would then turn west and south across the Quality Welding – also known as the Machine Shed – property to connect with the trail at an existing location near the center and west edge of his land.
Sawall said he believed that he and village and county officials “are on the same page.”
“Everyone agrees on moving the trail. It just a question of how we move it and getting all of the approvals,” he said.
Waukesha County officials said they will review Sawall’s proposal as soon they receive the plans.
Village Administrator Jeremy Smith said Sawall, village and county officials hope to meet within the next two weeks to discuss various options for moving the trail.
Smith said there are other options to be studied and he will support “whatever plan can get done.” Among the other options is a plan that would use village-owned property on the north side of Main Street.
Sawall and village officials want the trail rerouted to clear the way for Sawall’s proposed development of apartment buildings, retail shops and possibly some office space on the 10-acre tract of land.
Sawall presented his conceptual plans to the Plan Commission last month. He anticipates developing the site in phases with construction of two of the apartment buildings first. After the apartment buildings are constructed and occupied, Sawall plans construction of retail shops.
The plans include the development of a community courtyard at the intersection of Waukesha Avenue and Main Street which Sawall said could serve as a “gateway entrance” to the village.
He said the courtyard might include a coffee or ice cream shop, and other retail establishments, that serve and compliment the foot and bicycle traffic using the trail.
However, all parties involved concur that rerouting the trail is a complicated process.
The strip of land that comprises the trail as it moves through the center of the former cannery site was purchased with federal and state dollars for recreational purposes. If the recreational purposes are transferred to a different land site, federal and state officials must be reimbursed with real estate of comparable size and value in terms of both dollars and potential recreation value.
The Bielinski Brothers, previous developers of the site, tried unsuccessfully for years to strike an agreement with state and federal officials to transfer the Bug Line off the site onto another nearby location.
Sawall said he is prepared to begin the process again which could take 18 to 24 months.
However, he said construction of the apartment buildings can begin without waiting for the trail to be moved.
From Siberia to Sussex
Amazing journey brings Art Sawall to Lake Country
By Kelly Smith
Posted: Jan. 24, 2013, Living Lake Country Reporter
Arthur Sawall and his mother, Bertha, standing in front of their apartment building in Tomsk, Siberia, in the former Soviet Union in 1967
“You can understand hardship better when you grow up in a three room house with no central heat in minus 35 degree Celsius temperatures and a communal outhouse,” said Art Sawall who is working to redevelop a 10-acre site in the Village of Sussex. “It also teaches you to appreciate the finer things in life.”
Sawall, 54, was born in Siberia, Russia, and overcame the hardships of a soviet labor camp. He later immigrated to the United States, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and founded a company that created and sold computer software for electrical engineers.
After selling the company, Sawall expanded his entrepreneurial horizons.
He now has real estate and restaurant investments, and next month, he will present his plans for redeveloping the abandoned cannery company site to the Sussex Village Plan Commission.
The $20 million dollar project, which includes apartment buildings and retail shops on the corner of Main Street and Waukesha Avenue, is a long way from Tomsk, Russia, a 408-year-old city with a population of about a half million people located in southeastern Siberia.
But, Sawall says his Russian childhood has contributed to his adult success.
“I understand cultures. I can speak three languages. I understand different ways people live,” he said.
Sawall, his wife Karin, and their three teenage children, live in Brookfield.
German heritage
One of his favorite enterprises is La Coppa, the artisan Italian Gelato Cafe on Bay Shore Road in Glendale that he owns with two Italian brothers who are Gelato masters.
“It was pure accident,” he said of the business enterprise.
“My kids are I was sitting at a gelato cafe in Germany having spaghetti gelato. It was delicious, and we realized there was nothing like it in the United States. They talked me into it,” he explained.
Sawall’s parents were Volga Germans, descendents of German immigrants who in the 18th century were encouraged by Empress Catherine the Great to move to Russia and farm in the Volga River valley. The immigrants were allowed to maintain their language, culture and religions, and were granted other rights by the Empress.
However, hundreds of years later, when war broke out between Germany and Russia in World War II, the soviet government feared the Volga Germans as potential Nazi collaborators and forcibly transported to them labor camps.
Sawall’s father, Waldemar, was 17 when he was captured and sent to Siberia where he later met his wife Bertha. Two of his brothers escaped and eventually migrated to Milwaukee.
Life in Russia
Sawall described his family as “prisoners of peace.” Although they were not confined to their home, they were living under Soviet rule and they were not allowed to travel.
Sawall fondly remembers growing up in Russia in the 1960s during the height of the Soviet-American Cold War although his living conditions, by American standards, bordered on primitive.
“As a kid you don’t realize what you don’t have,” he said.
“I can remember the communal bath house that we used go to and take baths about every two weeks,” he said.
While winters could be long, cold and harsh, summers temperatures were moderate to warm and the days were long.
Sawall and his boyhood buddies had to make up games of their own while playing outside since state TV programming was limited to a few hours.
The international tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States went unnoticed among Sawall and his friends.
Sawall said schools in the Soviet Union did not conduct the nuclear attack air raid drills that were popular in some American schools in the 1950s and ’60s.
Second grade students in Russia, he said, were required to study a foreign language.
Sawall said after he arrived in the United States in the late 1960s, he discovered Soviet schools were more advanced.
“The second grade students in Siberia would be doing the equivalent of fourth grade work in the United States.” he said.
Sawall said his closely knit family had a higher standard of living than many of their neighbors because his father did not drink.
“Most of the men drank heavily and spent money on vodka. But, my father saved money,” he explained.
In addition to being frugal, Sawall’s father was also industrious and ambitious.
He built a coop to raise chickens and rabbits and planted potatoes. There were very few vegetables because the growing season was so short
Sawall said his father has maintained his German work ethic even at age 84. Today, Sawall and his father live in the same neighborhood.
“If its snows and I am not at his house by 4 a.m., he has already shoveled his drive,” Sawall noted.
The Sawalls left Russia and moved to the Milwaukee in 1967.
“We were one of the first families to leave Russia legally,” he explained.
In an effort to improve relations with the United States, the Soviet Union agreed not to block the reuniting of some Soviet-American families.
Business in the U.S.
Sawall’s uncles in Milwaukee had worked for nine years to get the family reunited in the United States.
“It was miracle, there is just no other way to describe it,” he explained.
Sawall graduated from James Madison High School in 1976 and attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee because “it was the only college I could afford.”
He majored in electrical engineer because “it was the highest paid job for a college graduate and there were hardly any unemployed electrical engineers.”
After graduation, he went to work for Square D, now Schneider Electric. While working in Germany, he not only met his wife, but he also noticed that the Germans had perfected a soft ware system designed especially for electrical engineers. Four years later he started a small company that specialized in the software.
After selling the company, Sawall discovered the Mammoth Springs Cannery Company in Sussex while talking to a real estate agent about another property that Sawall had spotted on Craig’s List. The agent told Sawall that the Craig’s List property had been sold, but the cannery site was available.
Sawall has verbal agreement on Sussex Inn
Posted: April 1, 2014, Living Sussex Sun
Village of Sussex Brookfield entrepreneur/developer Arthur Sawall says he has reached a verbal agreement to purchase the Sussex Inn but adds that he will wait for the result of a regional marketing study before determining how he will redevelop the property as well as the nearby NAPA building, both located on the north side of Main Street.
Sawall is building a multi-use residential and retail complex on the south side of Main Street at the site of the former Mammoth Springs Cannery Company on the corner of Main Street and Waukesha Avenue.
Earlier this month, tenants began moving into the first apartment building completed on the project. Sawall hopes to eventually construct five apartment buildings, each with 30 units, and two retail/commercial buildings at about 6,000 square feet each.
After he gained village approvals and financing for the Mammoth Springs project on the south side of Main Street, he began eyeing for possible redevelopment three landmark properties, the NAPA building, the M&M restaurant building and the Sussex Inn, on the north side of Main Street “Mammoth Springs North” as he called it.
Verbal agreement
A few weeks ago, he reached a tentative agreement with the owners of the NAPA building, but the sale has been contingent on his ability to acquire the Sussex Inn, where negotiations, until recently, had been at an impasse.
Sawall confirmed in an interview last week that he had reached a verbal agreement with Phil Kmiec who represents the Kmiec family trust, which owns the building.
“As soon as I reached a verbal agreement with Phil, I began thinking about a regional marketing study that will help me and the bank decide whether my vision for Mammoth Springs North is realistic,” Sawall said.
Sawall envisions about 60 additional apartment units, along with commercial/retail buildings on the north side of the street, to complement the 150 rental units and 12,000 square feet of commercial space on the south side.
Is demand there?
The market study is intended to determine whether the Lake Country region is large enough to economically support two major business intersections in Sussex; Highway 164 and Silver Spring Road, and Waukesha Avenue (Highway 74) and Main Street. There is also a nearly 200,000 square foot grocery and household good store being constructed at the intersection of Highways 164 and K (Lisbon Road).
Sawall believes that his Lake Country market for the apartments extends along Highway 16 as far west as Oconomowoc.
“I would consider the Highway 164 intersection to be the primary one and Waukesha Avenue and Main Street to be a secondary intersection. The question is whether the region can support both,” he said.
If the Lake Country market is large enough to sustain the two intersections, Sawall said he could begin redevelopment of the Sussex Inn and NAPA properties without acquiring the M & M building between them.
More progress at Mammoth Springs in Sussex
By Kelly Smith
Posted: Aug. 4, 2014, Living Sussex Sun
Village of Sussex — Mammoth Springs developer Art Sawall anticipates that by spring of next year two more apartment buildings will be open at the residential/commercial development being constructed at the corner of Main Street and Waukesha Avenue.
However, Sawall said he is not sure when construction will begin on two retail/commercial buildings intended to complement the five 30-unit high end apartment buildings slated for construction.
The initial two apartment buildings are completed and are about 90 to 95 percent occupied, according to Sawall.
Construction has began on the third and fourth apartment buildings, he said. Sawall anticipates the third building will be available for occupancy in April of 2015 and the fourth building will open in May.
In addition to the five apartment buildings on the south side of Main Street, Sawall said a marketing survey he recently commissioned indicated there is a demand for high end apartments in the village and additional apartment buildings could be constructed across the street from Mammoth Springs, on the south side of Main Street.
However, so far, Sawall’s negotiations to purchase existing buildings on the south side of the street have been unsuccessful.
Sawall acknowledged he is “absolutely surprised” that, so far, there has been little commercial tenant interest in his plans to build two commercial/retail buildings, each about 6,500 square feet, to complement the anticipated 150 apartment units.
“I thought with the apartments and the existing commercial buildings at the intersection, Boneyards (restaurant) and Rumors (sports bar and grill), there would be more interest,” he said.
“Usually, if you build it, they will come. There is more interest when there is construction going on. But, the banks won’t do it that way anymore. And, I can’t blame them,” Sawall added.
Sawall began construction on the $21 million project in March 2013, two years after spending a reported $750,000 to purchase the approximately 10-acre tract of land on the east edge of the village that was once the site of a cannery company.
A Bug Line in the ointment
Before beginning the construction, he had to work his way through a labyrinth of local, state and federal bureaucracies in order to relocate the Waukesha County Bug Line Recreational Trail. When he purchased the land, the trail ran through the center of the property. He gained approvals necessary to reroute the trail around his development.
For nearly two decades, village officials had been seeking a developer with the financial backing and bureaucratic management skills to put together a redevelopment package at the site.
Sawall is the son of German immigrants who were in a Soviet labor camp when he was born. The Sawalls were released from prison in the mid 1960s and moved to Milwaukee in 1967.
Sawall graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in electrical engineering. He later started a small business that specialized in the use of a computer software system that enabled electrical engineers to download schematic electrical designs for construction projects onto a computer.
He later sold the company and became interested in real estate development. He discovered the Mammoth Springs Cannery site while talking to a real estate agent about another parcel of land he had spotted on Craigslist.