• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Doomed Ridges on auction block

Photo

Photo by Lukas Keapproth

A real estate auction sign sits just off Highway 26 between Milton and Janesville.

Photo

Tony DiNicola

Janesville/Milton - Kennedy Homes development

JANESVILLE — An ambitious residential development that began in 2006 with a goal to build 900 homes on 400 acres will end next month with only 11 homes built and the remaining land sold at auction.

Ridges of Rock County was owned by Kennedy Homes, an Illinois-based company. The land is located between Janesville and Milton along Highway 26.

The company had planned to build 100 homes a year.

But in 2008, building slowed to a halt. Kennedy Homes sued its lenders for causing the company to become insolvent.

A financial institution in Chicago now owns the property and is motivated to sell, said Bob Johnson of Badger State Auction & Real Estate.

He will sell 65 acres of improved lots and 23 acres of undeveloped lots.

The 163 developed and undeveloped lots will be sold in bundles of 19 to 41 lots.

Johnson will auction another 155 acres as farmland. Randy Hughes has been renting and farming the land.

All the land was annexed into the city of Janesville and zoned residential.

Johnson also will auction 25 lots developed by Kennedy Homes on Whitewater's west side. They will be sold individually.

Duane Cherek of Janesville's planning department said about 95 lots of the Ridges lots are improved with street, sewer and water. The city did not lose money on the infrastructure because Kennedy Homes paid $2.75 million up front.

Kennedy Homes had proposed a different kind of construction than people here were used to, Cherek said. The two-story homes were to be built on narrow lots with no basements. The sales line went that customers would get more bang for their building buck.

The lots are 70 to 75 feet wide and up to 115 feet deep. The homes are platted in tight clusters with open spaces around the perimeter.

A developer might want to modify the development plan when the residential housing market rebounds, Cherek said.

Some changes—such as increasing the size of lots—might be difficult because some private utility lines could already be installed.

Cherek doesn't expect the sale to reverse a sluggish trend in construction permits.

Five years ago, the city issued 231 single-family home permits. Last year, permits numbered 49, and so far this year only 23 have been issued.

Johnson describes the land as "great, productive" farmland in a great location.

Farmland prices have increased even as residential home values have decreased.

"It's something there's only so much of," Johnson said.

The last "pretty good" farmland he auctioned went for about $8,000 an acre.

"There's a lot of promise here," Johnson said.

People willing to take the chance and invest now could reap dividends if the economy takes off and Janesville and Milton once again continue to expand, Johnson said.

Subdivision might no longer be an island

By Neil Johnson

For Mandy Wille and her very few neighbors on Samson Drive, the last four years have been clean country living in a big, mostly empty subdivision.

Thistles, crabgrass and grasshoppers dominate the undeveloped landscape in Wille's neighborhood at the Ridges of Rock County on Janesville's north end.

Call it de facto "green space" or a failed business plan. Whatever it is, Wille and the eight other families who live in the defunct subdivision have had hundreds of acres to themselves since 2008.

That's when South Barrington, Ill., firm Kennedy Homes, the developer who planned to build 900 homes in the Ridges subdivision, walked away from the project, claiming financial insolvency in a lawsuit against its lenders.

Kennedy Homes built just 11 homes in the subdivision between Janesville and Milton.

Now, a Chicago lender that holds the remaining unsold and undeveloped 400 acres tied to the development plans to sell blocks of the property at auction Nov. 11.

The sale could put some of the lots into the hands of investors.

But the subdivision has been bare for so long that its residents have gotten used to all the space.

"We're just used to it being nice and quiet here. We're really close with our neighbors. We don't mind it being empty here," Wille said.

The residents have gotten used to undeveloped plots that hold water and mosquitoes every summer. They're used to the empty land being mowed once a month by who knows who.

They're used to having had no contact in the last four years with anyone tied to Kennedy Homes.

Laura Orsburne, who lives two doors from Wille, said she's torn over news of the auction. She knows it would be a benefit to owners to have a more fully developed neighborhood, but the isolation's been nice.

"We like the quiet. We wouldn't want the construction noise," Orsburne said half-jokingly.

Wille wouldn't mind if development started again. After all, she expected hundreds of neighbors before the economy tanked. She just wonders how likely a building boom would be any time soon.

"It's a wait and see. Nobody's really building right now. Even if they sell to a builder, are they going to be building anytime soon? I don't know," Wille said.