Green Bay Press Gazette, October 10, 2004
Taxable value of downtown lags city’s overall growth, examination finds
By Karen Rauen
krauen@greenbaypressgazette.com
When you walk downtown, you see that parking is everywhere, on nearly every block and sometimes entire blocks. More than 37 acres in the 217-acre district are dedicated to parking. The land of yellow stripes and black asphalt contributed roughly $136,000 to the city’s tax base in 2003.
That’s just one example of what two Press-Gazette reporters learned when they got out of their cars and hit the streets to get to know downtown. The team reviewed tax records for all 372 parcels in the city center — an area bordered by the Fox and East rivers, East Mason Street and Monroe Avenue — and documented how each bit of land is used.
More than half of downtown’s parcels are dedicated to business — commercial, entertainment or financial; 132 parcels are off the tax rolls; and only about 30 parcels are residential. But downtown, considered the city’s central business district, is losing its financial import.
While the city as a whole increased in assessed value by 21 percent from 2000 to 2003, downtown’s east side lost 3 percent of its value — roughly $5 million.
The city center provided 3.53 percent of Green Bay’s $37.8 million tax levy in 2000. By 2003, Green Bay counted on downtown for only 2.94 percent of the $39.5 million levy.
Still, things are looking up, said City Planning Director Rob Strong, whose department is as busy as it’s been in years.
“For the east side of downtown, we’ve had a big boost in the last year and a half,” he said. “A lot of things happened in a very short period of time.”
The value of recently completed projects — Johnson Bank and St. Brendan’s Inn — was not reflected in the 2003 land records. Under the city’s recent revaluation, the two properties will be valued at $5.07 million and $1.28 million respectively.
More is in the works. If Milwaukee-based Vetter Denk Architects’ plan
for the riverfront gets off the ground, it could add $60 million to $95
million of value to a three-block area between the Walnut Street and
Ray Nitschke Memorial bridges. 
