TOWN OF FREDONIA, Wis. — The Town of Fredonia has purchased the long-vacant Waubeka mill and button factory for $40,000, closing a years-long dispute over the fate of two deteriorating structures that had raised safety concerns and prompted the town to approve an eminent domain process.
Fredonia Town Clerk Chris Jenkins confirmed the town closed with now former property owner Charles Sheridan last week. The sale price covered both properties and was reached to avoid proceeding with the eminent domain claim the town government had already approved.
The county plans to use grant money to convert the properties into a small riverfront park along the Milwaukee River.
Watch: Waubeka neighbors react as crumbling mill and button factory sold to town
The mill, built in the mid-1800s, sits in Waubeka — an unincorporated community a few miles west of Fredonia. The structures had sat empty and deteriorating for years, blocked off by fencing. The mill partially collapsed at one point, with debris temporarily blocking part of Mill Street.
"Went there with my dad years ago when it was an operating feed mill," Waubeka neighbor Ron Lanser said. "Now it's a pile of junk... Time to clean it up, get rid of it."
Fellow neighbor Darren Lube, who moved to Waubeka seven years ago drawn by its small-town calmness, called the outcome largely positive — even if the buildings carry historical weight.
"It's an old, rundown, tired building, but it's part of history," Lube said. "I guess that's a pretty positive outcome, a park for an abandoned building."
Sheridan tells TMJ4 the sale carries a different weight. He said he spent years attempting to rehabilitate the buildings — at one point envisioning a boathouse — but could not obtain the necessary government approvals, in part because the properties sit in a floodplain. Those plans never moved forward.
"I believe that demolition of this building is a big loss to the Town, though many would disagree with that," Sheridan said in a statement to TMJ4 News.
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