Firstly, a warning: this is going to be long.

And a note – one of the nicest things a supervisor ever said to me was noticing that I don’t speak negatively about people. That is broadly true, and especially in a working context. I try to provide praise when relevant, but am used to working with excellent people and keep forgetting to note out loud that it is in fact excellence. I also differentiate between the characteristics of a person and the policies and actions of a corporate or political entity, no matter how closely tied they are. The core of my personal rule, too, is to never say anything about someone that I wouldn’t say directly to their face.

So when I talk about JG here, I am writing of JG Development, the corporate entity making proposals and doing work. I have no idea who is involved in particular actions except for who shows up at meetings, and have no opinions about Jeff Grundahl as a person.

Now to the meat of it: writing about the charm of Mount Horeb, as I started doing from a personal perspective last time. It was suggested that there were really good parameters in the building code, so I’m reviewing the Building Code and the Comprehensive Plan. One upside of currently searching for work: I have bandwidth for close reading of policy documents for fun. The Comprehensive Plan is from 2022, and was amended in 2024, so it’s still pretty current, given that they’re supposed to be good for ten years (though they can be updated or amended as needed).

Comprehensive Plan

In 2042, the Village of Mount Horeb will continue to be a thriving and active community that builds on its unique culture, character, assets, location, and history to foster community, economic, and tourism development. The Village will continue to grow and evolve by developing and retaining local businesses, attracting new businesses and employers, and offering housing availability and affordability, while maintaining its character, aesthetic look, and feel. A vibrant downtown featuring the community’s historic past and bright future acts as the community’s center piece for cultural, recreational, business, shopping, and tourism activities. Building on its high quality of life, the Village will be a welcoming, safe, clean, healthy, and inclusive place to live, work, and play.

This is the vision statement that begins the comprehensive plan. I like it. It’s solid. Langhus has certainly fostered community. I have made several friends aligned in opposition to it, and gotten to know my neighbors much better. The proposal has done an incredible job of fostering community. It could be dropped now and still have contributed to sense of community.

Nothing has been said about the affordability of the apartments in Langhus. Sure, yeah, we need a mix, and there’s a place for luxury condos, but I’m not sure Main Street with its traffic is one of them. And I was walking to Kwik Trip the other day and on that short trip saw two spaces on Main Street for rent. Shiny new retail space closer to the municipal building might be more visible and easier to get businesses and customers in. But how much easier? Especially with a recession looming. And one of the buildings is the one with Family Dental Care, which fits so perfectly with the aesthetic look of the village that it takes paying attention to the parking availability and layout (or asking) to realize that it’s not historical.

Anyway, I should eventually move on from the vision statement, though there is more mileage to be gotten from it. One of the goals is to have construction be orderly. lol. I mean sure there is a sort of orderliness to petitions, hours of carefully timed 3 minute public comments (almost all of which were in opposition), and yard sign campaigns. But there is a certain disorder and discord to last-minute and requirement-for-public-notice-violating changes to agendas as items are removed from the agenda to give the village attorney more time to review an ethics violation complaint against a board member. It was determined not to be a conflict of interest, and the rest of the complaint not addressed.

On the complaint

It’s not just that Marc Schellpfeffer, one of the Trustees, has done several jobs for JG as an architect and then deliberately hidden the public posts he’d made about it. It’s also that he spoke at a Planning Commission meeting and basically pressured them to approve it so that he could approve it. I may be able to link to the full text at some point, but it was made in full knowledge that in a village in particular industries it’s hard to have not worked with someone. Marc’s behavior went beyond that.

The Comprehensive Plan does explicitly include infill development. I’m in favor of infill! I would love to have more interesting shops to poke at within vague sauntering distance. Artemis Provisions & Cheese was an absolute treat, and I’m sad they’re closed. Oh, and that’s another existing, empty retail space on Main, precisely across from where Langhus will be. Nothing says vibrant downtown like adding empty storefronts so we look like a ghost mall!

Hmm. We have the housing report, but I haven’t seen a Housing Balance Plan, and nothing turns up on the village website. Did we ever get one?

Ooh, and it is supposed to be “attractive and unique, not a suburban feel.” Which I absolutely support and agree with. At least the current iteration of Langhus no longer feels exactly like a suburban development, but the fact that JG is getting their feedback (that they listen to; there’s been plenty from the community) from The Gallina Companies, a property management company with significant presence in Middleton (a suburb) and Madison (presumably suburbs) does support that there’s not particular emphasis on not being suburban. And, of course, we come back to parking, where Langhus is designed for a kind of urban or suburban living with less car dependence and more options for public transit and delivery. We’re an exurb. We’re a village. I don’t drive and my household has only one car and that works for us only because of very specific and hard to replicate circumstances (no kids and I’m a disaster scientist of such exquisite paranoia that my household never had anything but a surplus of toilet paper the entirety of Covid lockdowns).

The plan goals include fostering diverse housing options. But there are at least four projects underway that have not come to fruition (the mixed use building by Miller’s, the Steve Brown apartments, the Karakahl senior & regular housing, and the split of two duplexes into four (really cute-sounding) single family homes), so I’d consider options pretty fostered at least until we see what these already-approved measures do to housing demand. The image here isn’t of ghost malls but of tumbleweed down apartment hallways. This image is informed by the Mount Horeb Housing Assessment.

It was completed in 2025, so is relatively current. It includes rental and owner occupancy, but Langhus will be rentals, so I’m only focusing on that. They counted 7 units for rent in Mount Horeb on Apartments.com; today I counted 6. With the recommended vacancy rates of 6-8% (instead of our current 3.1%), we “could absorb” up to 275 new rental units in the next five years. Also the most acute need is for affordable housing. So, they note that the Steve Brown apartments are included in their estimates of what can be absorbed. So that’s our starting point to get to 275 new rental units.

• Steve Brown = 63 apartments
• Springdale development = 26 apartments
• JTK (Karakahl) = 89 (49 market rate, 40 affordable senior housing)
• Tichenor request = 1
• Apartment above Surplus Suds = 1
• Total new rentals in planning = 180

So, less than a year after completion of the survey, we’re 65% of the way to answering the projected 5-year rental need. So getting Langhus up isn’t answering a really urgent need. And if we’re looking at keeping the vacancy rate the same instead of increasing it to an ideal standard, we’re at 180 of 261, or 69%.

Side note: including in the Planning Committee agenda the opinion of a Texas City Manager talking about how public engagement is broken is petty. Especially when Mount Horeb engagement has been – well, loud, in some cases – but very much organized, respectful and informed. I am on my third latte of the day and reviewing agenda packets to make sure I am accurately representing the facts rather than relying on my own memory of events, because, yes, facts matter more than feelings. Facts matter more than feelings of persecution at being subject to a vocal democracy.

Anyway! I really like the callout boxes in the Comprehensive Plan.

WHAT IS MOUNT HOREB’S COMMUNITY CHARACTER?
While difficult to define, the character of a community has much to do with why people move to, stay in, and value the place they call home. Below are terms residents of the Village use to describe their “community character.”
 Tight nit[sic] community where you run into people you know on the street
 Attractive and aesthetically unique, not a suburban feel
 People are friendly, kind, and welcoming
 Small-town feel with cultural connection and sense of place
 Walkable
 Historic and active downtown
 Community is built around the schools
 Civic involvement
 Significant natural resources and recreational opportunities
 High quality of life

I agree with all of this – I adore running into the woman with the parrot at the Farmer’s Market, where an incredibly kind woman sets aside focaccia for me most weeks. And, while I don’t have kids, I love that I live somewhere with lots of Trick or Treaters, where the community is universally excited about the high school choir and marching band going to London for the New Year festivities, where 2/3 of the time when someone comes doing door to door sales it’s kids raising money for an activity (most recent treasure: comb honey to support the FFA). I voted for a tax hike to support a school renovation and only have very small regrets now that my tax bill has arrived and I have to put my money where my mouth is. I love the high quality of life, and how it’s epitomized by the confluence of artistry and practicality: the gorgeous ceramics I bought across the street are microwave and dishwasher safe, the independent local yarn store with the gorgeous ranges of local and imported yarn supports knitting socks to withstand Wisconsin winters, the Makers Market supports a range of artists and will sell me beautiful plant displays I can’t kill.

And let’s just all pause on civic involvement for a moment and think about how well we’re doing. Savemoho.org is a great example of civic involvement. The tremendous crowds that mandate getting larger locations whenever Langhus is going to be discussed in a public meeting are a great example of the large number of people very driven to be civically involved. Again, the proposal could be benched for a year while other things go up and the proposal is reworked and it would still have very much helped further Comprehensive Plan goals.

Multimodal transit is mentioned, and it would be lovely, but that’s beyond the current scope.

Infill development is explicitly called out as a good thing in the chapter on natural resources. Though that chapter also talks about solar as a good thing, and I don’t remember seeing solar on any of the Langhus plans, despite that massive expanse of roof. Also the literally zero green space part does not maximize permeable surfaces. Plus no rain gardens, and while “[t]here will be green roof over two canopies and in some roof areas” (source) is some commitment to natural resources, it does not offer much in the way of guarantees about the scope of the green roofing.

Also, to once again and to my regret talk about parking: there’s no EV parking in the Langhus plan, despite it being called out as desirable in the Comprehensive Plan. Some of the young hip(???) people who might want that kind of urban living vibe would absolutely need EV charging available.

Ooh, I’m now on to the Cultural Resources chapter. I don’t have any Norwegian heritage. I don’t even have much Wisconsin heritage, though I was the fourth generation of women in my stepmom’s family to go to UW-Whitewater. So I can’t really speak to the authenticity of the aesthetics of the proposed Langhus design, except that it doesn’t include any trolls or place to put trolls and that seems extremely deficient for something that would perforce be a main object of attention on the Trollway. I’m glad the Olson house is getting moved instead of razed.

Some of this chapter focuses on the need for pedestrian focus and social, walkable spaces. From the pedestrian focus perspective, Langhus could be seen as furthering that, especially with one-way internal parking movement. But lack of parking doesn’t translate directly to being pedestrian-focused. Lack of room to accommodate a pedestrian alongside a car in the alley behind the building makes it more dangerous for pedestrians. People have to be able to park somewhere before they go on a relaxed pedestrian amble. Also, again, the building no longer has any community amenities like a gym or community room to have social space inside.

Almost all of the Land Use chapter supports Langhus, except: “Use logical transitions between neighboring and potentially incompatible land uses, such as buffering with landscaping, open space uses, or less intensive land uses, between potentially incompatible land uses” and “Maintain high standards in the Zoning Ordinance for buildings, landscaping, signage, building materials, and parking areas.” Which have pretty much been the sticking points. An alley under much heavier traffic is not a logical transition between neighboring land uses – a buffer space with landscaping or at least outdoor parking giving pedestrians openings to duck between cars (we had that a few iterations ago, can’t we have it back?) would relieve a lot of stress. And standards like ‘have green space’ and ‘have enough parking’ are great standards that should be upheld. Everything else pretty much works! The remaining two points are not actually optional! You do not get partial credit on ‘charming village,’ you just get disappointment.

And on to community facilities and how we’re already stretched thin as regards fire and EMS. I would sure like to know that we can have adequate fire response for all of Mount Horeb before we add more people to it! I am extremely in favor of public safety. Another reason to delay Langhus until we can get more staff for the Fire Department. Fun fact: the medical examiner for the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire stopped doing autopsies after the sixth one because polyester makes its own horror show and he couldn’t face more of it. Obviously by ‘fun fact’ I mean ‘fund the fire department.’

I love that the chapter on housing development specifically mentions avoiding tract housing; its lack is part of what made Mount Horeb an attractive place to move to. Anyway, phrases such as “phasing development over time” could get pinned up nicely next to the list of multifamily housing developments still in the approved-but-not-built stage as reasons to push Langhus down the road some. Also yoooo high-quality housing includes amenities beyond shops downstairs. Like a community room. Or the dog was station that was in a prior iteration? The dog wash station was cool, even as someone who does not own dogs.

And creating attractive streetscapes! You know what’s not attractive? A gate leading to weeds and dead arbor vitae. Zero lot line means Langhus technically should be right up a foot and a half from the MHTC building, but it’s already pulled back enough to allow access, so why not pull it back another couple feet? Allow for a dedicated path or if they still want no traffic, some landscaping. You know what’s real pretty and a better deterrent than a gate? Rose bushes. Or a Redosier Dogwood, if you want to be less aggressive about it.

Another fantastic quote from the Comprehensive Plan that has seemingly been not just overlooked but defenestrated: “Provide on-site recreational and open space areas to serve the needs of residents. Whenever possible, develop contiguous rear yards as a unit to encourage use by building residents and guests.”

Chapter 10 on Economic Development was written before tariffs sent our ability to do economic projections out for cigarettes like the proverbial disappearing parent. Intergovernmental cooperation is irrelevant to this single proposal, and Implementation is primarily a summary and set of actions for the village.

In conclusion, the Langhus proposal fits in with a lot of the Comprehensive Plan, being mixed use infill construction. But it falls short in a couple important areas, and is too centrally located for partial marks to be acceptable.

Zoning Code

I adore that Mount Horeb has transparent governance and I can find relevant sections of the Municipal Code online. The relevant requirements are in Chapter 17 Zoning Code: Article IV Zoning Districts: 17.43 CB Central Business District. Basically, they already can’t fulfill everything because MHTC isn’t right on the lot line. JG is doing their best on all other fronts, but a noted exception is that while they have to pave right to the rear lot line, they don’t have to build to it. They could do uncovered parking in the rear, allowing parking for visitors and business employees and safer alley access.

I guess JG doesn’t have to wait for Board approval before they move the Olson house, just the Planning Commission approval they already have. Also I think I was supposed to seek Planning Commission approval before I repainted my house, considering I’m technically part of the same Central Business District. The more you know!

The Plan

The final segment of this is commentary on the plan itself and JG’s actions throughout this process. JG are not good neighbors. I became an expert on the Military Ridge Trail through town over the summer and the nuances of ownership and obligation and governance. In trying to nail things down, some people may be familiar with the fact that I asked Facebook, then a Parks and Rec meeting, then a Sustainability and Natural Resources meeting before I resorted to emailing the friends of military ridge state trail and calling the DNR. I think I accidentally made the DNR rep for the area feel somewhat hunted before I resorted to my true love: reading bylaws and policy documents. I’ve also looked at the plat map of my own house, which includes a reference to DNR policy. And let me say: JG are the ones who are supposed to have cleared the damned giant ragweed from the parking lot edges. 

x

Ordinance Description

The ordinance in the bylaws is no structures within 30 feet of the trail. And, in most places, the DNR owns a wide swathe on either side of the trail. But Duluth isn’t built on DNR lands, and my plat map agrees with the Dane county GIS map: I (well, mostly the bank, but working on it) own up to about 2 feet from the trail. I haven’t looked at JG’s plat map, but the GIS concurs: they also own up to a couple feet from the trail (for most of the parking lot: some is owned by the church). I was wandering in the yard today and couldn’t find that survey marker, so I can’t provide that kind of photographic evidence, but Dane County GIS is publicly available and, while not intended for site specific analysis, is pretty illustrative. The other side of the trail isn’t the same: the DNR owns a much wider swathe there. Our block is unique. But as I share the block with JG and got really mad about the ragweed, I found out. As property owners we’re technically in charge of maintenance. As property owners subject to DNR governance, that means we can’t add structures, including fences (I wanted to put in a bitty decorative one after a discussion in passing with someone from the rec department that it was easier for them to see where to mow when it was marked off). But we’re still in charge of, for example, weeding the single biggest environmental allergen that grows locally. Someone even spread wildflower seeds there and got DNR permission to do a burn and has stated the intention to pay for it; I think JG would be better community members if they did so.

Which is to say I can understand why JG wants to take advantage of the fullness of a zero lot line requirement and not have landscaping: it doesn’t seem to be a priority. This may seem like a side issue from an obsessed woman on a crusade against ragweed, which I can’t say is entirely unfair. But it’s also a central concern: would the development make for good neighbors, through both the construction and the management?

JG has shown willingness to be good neighbors to MHTC by pulling back the balconies of the third floor. Good. I love having fiber internet from an award-winning local carrier, and I’d hate some kind of price hike because their roof collapsed under the snow. 

But those three lots also have neighbors to the back. Not just the entire neighborhood, who are mostly annoyed and dreading traffic and were consulted only in public forums. Not even just the deSonias, the immediate neighbors who weren’t informed until the first public hearing and who might not be able to safely use their driveway ever again if the development goes in as outlined at the November meeting. But they haven’t even talked to the fucking DOT about the alley. There are weird requirements because it’s technically a highway frontage road. 

Anyway, all this is to say: next Village Board meeting is January 7th at 7pm in the Senior Center. https://mounthorebwi.portal.civicclerk.com/event/2690/files/agenda/4636 Please attend or watch as you are able, and review the proposal package.