Consultants unveil draft Waunakee 2040 goals and conceptual opportunity sites; public workshop planned

Consultants from the Lakota Group on Monday introduced draft goals and strategies for the Waunakee 2040 comprehensive plan and showed early, conceptual designs for several "opportunity sites" in and near downtown.

Andy Cross, lead consultant, said this is Waunakee's first standalone comprehensive plan (the existing plan was shared with a neighboring municipality) and described the project as three phases. "This is our first opportunity to do a new one just for the village," Cross said, and he summarized phase-two work on goals such as thoughtful growth, regulatory updates, housing strategy, infrastructure and connectivity. The presentation emphasized that the opportunity-site graphics are conceptual tools to spur public discussion, not prescriptive development proposals.

Cross and colleague Hannah walked commissioners through four early opportunity-site ideas — including the Rex's Innkeeper corridor and a larger mixed-use vision for the area around Ace Hardware and the village roundabout — and stressed outreach to property owners so owners are not surprised by conceptual graphics. Commissioners asked that major property owners be notified in advance of public release and suggested staging long-term concepts so the public can see plausible intermediate steps toward any large redevelopment.

A public workshop will be held at the Village Center on the 19th for detailed community feedback; consultants said attendees will be shown more polished opportunity-site graphics and the draft future land-use map. The plan is structured to move from goals and strategies toward specific, actionable implementation steps in a later phase.