Green Bay's Out of Patience

• Green Bay sued Merge, LLC to reclaim Shipyard District land after years of delays.
• The city invested significantly in public infrastructure, expecting private development that failed to materialize.
• The lawsuit's outcome could restart development with a new partner.

Last Thursday, the city of Green Bay sued Merge, LLC, an Iowa company that has held the rights to develop apartments in the Shipyard District since 2021 but has not started construction. The lawsuit, filed in Brown County Circuit Court, asks a judge to end the development agreement and return the two riverfront properties to the city. This marks the end of a drawn-out dispute that has lasted nearly five years, involving a $1 land sale, a $15 million value goal that was never reached, and repeated extension requests that eventually wore out the city's Redevelopment Authority.

If you have followed Shipyard coverage even loosely, none of the individual complaints in the lawsuit will surprise you. The city says Merge never timely obtained financing, never completed construction, never satisfied the assessed value benchmark it agreed to, and never cured its defaults despite written notice and, per the complaint, "multiple opportunities to do so." What is new is the city's conclusion. After years of amending the deal to buy Merge more runway, the lawsuit argues Merge has "forfeited its contractual rights" and that the city is entitled to take the land back.

The Lawsuit Itself

The complaint describes Merge's responsibilities in broad terms: the company was expected to deliver a "transformative mixed-use waterfront development, secure financing, invest substantial private capital, and create at least $15 million in new taxable value." None of these goals were met. Instead, the filing says Merge asked for another multi-year extension this year, even though construction was still nowhere near starting.

That last point is important. Merge was not surprised by an unexpected problem. According to the city, Merge entered the latest talks already admitting it was far from starting construction, yet still asked for more time. For the Redevelopment Authority, which had already changed the agreement several times, this was likely when patience ran out. As of Friday, Merge had not responded in court, and a spokesperson told a local TV station the company had no comment. No hearing date has been set.

How We Got Here

The Shipyard site, once a rail and industrial area along the river's west bank just north of the Mason Street bridge, has been part of Green Bay's redevelopment plans since 2015. The city first considered it for a minor league baseball stadium, but that idea did not work out. By 2018, the city transitioned to a mixed-use plan led by Breakthrough, a local transportation and logistics company that announced an $8 million headquarters for the site.

Breakthrough withdrew in early 2020, telling the city it still wanted to build in Green Bay but not on that site. Its parent company, US Venture, later built the headquarters in Titletown instead.

Merge Urban Development Group, an Iowa company already working on another project in Ashwaubenon, quickly stepped in after Breakthrough left. Merge proposed about 225 market-rate apartments in two buildings. The Green Bay City Council approved a development agreement with Merge in May 2021, calling it the first real private investment in a district the city had owned and mostly just paid taxes and interest on since the early 1990s.

Construction did not begin for another fourteen months, and when it did, it was the city's public infrastructure projects that started first, not Merge's apartments. In July 2022, the city held a celebratory ceremony for the promenade, floating docks, fishing pier, and kayak launch it had promised to build. This $8.8 million public investment was required by contract, no matter what Merge did. At that time, Merge's buildings were still just drawings. Mayor Eric Genrich said that "a lot of different ideas have been kicked around" for the site but was hopeful that this time the plans would move forward.

Most of those plans did not happen on time. By January 2024, almost seven years after the site was first chosen for redevelopment, Merge's plan had changed again. It now included three buildings connected by a skywalk, with the first phase reduced to 109 units. The city's Plan Commission approved the new design, but construction kept getting delayed. The city finished its own Phase I public improvements in October 2024, celebrating the new promenade and riverfront features with a ribbon-cutting, while Merge's apartments were still not built.

By February, the Redevelopment Authority had run out of patience. At a special meeting on February 24, board members suggested a third change to the agreement, this time with a strict condition: if Merge did not start "vertical construction" by June 1, 2026, the city could buy back the Arndt and Bridge Street properties for one dollar. Merge's managing partner, Brent Dahlstrom, said the timeline was not realistic and asked for a September 1 start date instead, mentioning ongoing engineering work on soil and roads. The board delayed a final vote to let Merge proffer more details, including proof of financing, by March 5. Whatever Merge sent in March was not enough. Four and a half months later, the city ended talks and filed the lawsuit.

The City Was Already Invested

The city's frustration is clear when you see how much it has spent to keep its promises while the other side did not. Green Bay set up a tax incremental financing district for the Shipyard site to pay for its public projects, expecting that new private development—especially Merge's apartments—would generate enough property taxes to pay off the debt. By January 2024, the city had borrowed about $12.1 million based on that hope. Two months later, as Phase I construction was almost done, the debt had grown to over $16.6 million, partly balanced by more than $7.3 million in state and federal grants, including a $5 million National Park Service grant for the second phase of park improvements. As recently as May, the city was still looking for another $1 million to fill a funding gap for Phase II, moving money from another business park TID to help.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities has warned for years that TIF districts are risky if a project stalls or the economy weakens, because taxpayers might end up paying off debt with no new property value to help. Wisconsin limits how much of a city's total value can be in TIF districts at once, since the system relies on private developers actually building what they promise. The city spent money on infrastructure expecting Merge's buildings would create enough tax revenue to pay off the debt, but five years later, there are only two empty parcels worth $1.17 million instead of the promised $15 million project.

Termination

If the city wins, or if Merge does not respond in time, Green Bay will get its riverfront parcels back and can start over with a new developer. This is not necessarily a bad outcome. The Shipyard's public features, like the fishing pier and the planned Phase II lawn and dog park, are separate from whether Merge or another developer builds apartments next door. Meanwhile, Green Bay's downtown apartment market is still active. Across the river, New Land Enterprises is building an eight-story, 268-unit project called Nova, aiming to finish in 2026, and another 125-unit bank conversion downtown is moving ahead without the long delays seen at the Shipyard.

Whether Green Bay can make up for lost time through the lawsuit, a settlement, or by finding a faster developer is now up to the Circuit Court. For now, the site remains empty.