Wisconsin Senate Committee Set To Take Up Telemark Bill

The Wisconsin Senate Committee on Economic Development is set to hold a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow the Town of Cable to use a financing tool for a $47 million plan to remodel Telemark Lodge. The bill would allow the town to create a tax incremental financing or TIF district.

Florida-based HK Hospitality recently reached a purchase agreement with current owners Mount Telemark Partners. HK Hospitality wants to remodel the lodge into a 250-room resort. The project is expected to create up to 180 full- and part-time jobs and about $25 million in visitor spending for northern Wisconsin.

A TIF district would allow increased property tax revenues created by the project to pay for the remodel or improvements in that area. Bill co-author Sen. Janet Bewley, D-Delta, said the bill gives the town a financing method to encourage development.

“It allows the town to borrow against that future revenue to make it available to Telemark to put in improvements,” she said. “I think, in this case, they’re mostly thinking about water and sewer. The tax revenues would go straight back to Cable so that it would pay off that bond.”

If tax revenues don’t increase enough to cover the loan payment, Bewley said the owners of Telemark would cover the difference.

Current law only allows towns with at least 3,500 people to create TIF districts if the value of taxable property is at least $500 million, which means Cable wouldn’t qualify, according to co-author and Marathon Republican Sen. Jerry Petrowski.

“We’ve done the same thing in a number of communities. We’ve done it in Brookfield, and we’ve done it in the Town of Somers,” he said. “This would just be a very narrow exemption for the Town of Cable to have a TIF district.”

Petrowski said the bill is one way to help move Telemark forward and bring jobs to northern Wisconsin.

“We have, of course, timber, logging, a little bit of manufacturing, some agriculture, but tourism is a real big thing in the Northwoods,” he said. “This is just one more thing that we can focus on to bring people up to Bayfield and Sawyer County.”

Bewley agreed and noted the bill doesn’t create the tax district, but rather allows the Town of Cable to decide.

“This (bill) alone isn’t going to make (the project), but not having it and not having a few others might break it,” she said.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee will also take up the bill Thursday.