By: Jesse Lin
Reader question: I have always wondered why (the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay) is so far out of the way from the city. It is not easy to get to and it is not easy for students who want to get into the city.
Answer: When Len Seidl walked into UWGB’s archival center in 2011 with a stack of papers, he said something to the effect of “I hear you have archives. I want to set the record straight,” recalled archive coordinator Debra Anderson.
He was the real estate salesman who pulled together 535 acres of farmland, waterfront property, and golf course greens from December 1965 to February 1966 in a last-minute bid to situate the University of Wisconsin-Northeast, as it was preliminarily called, on Green Bay’s northeast side.
“But he is perplexed today,” read one of Seidl’s documents, an article penned by former Green Bay Press-Gazette editor Robert Woessner, “that his effective sales efforts in the 1960s led to his reputation being clouded and to his motives being questioned by many colleagues ― all because he reversed what most everyone then believed to be the obvious.”
The first choice of the regional and state site selection committees since Nov. 20, 1964, according to an archived report to the governor, was to place a new four-year university at Larsen Farm — where Northeast Wisconsin Technical College currently sits — on the west side.
The choice was unanimous.
The report said Larsen Farm offered “a number of advantages not found in any of the other sites,” which numbered 17 across northeastern Wisconsin by the end of the selection process on Feb. 25, 1966. On the committee’s letter-grade system, the 402-acre site scored As and Bs on nearly all criteria. Its apple and cherry orchards on high, rolling ground were aesthetically pleasing. No other location beat its proximity to Interstate 41, the airport, and bus lines.
The only ding against the site elaborated on by the committee was its closeness to a rendering plant and a concrete-making facility. It also got a C for its irregular shape.
Speed was paramount. The committee wanted to plan and acquire a site before the end of 1965, and to open the campus by September 1969.
The number of G.I. Bill soldiers were expected to overload Green Bay’s existing two-year college, said Anderson, and local business leaders were lobbying the state for a four-year university in northeastern Wisconsin.
High school graduation rates in Brown and Outagamie counties saw “massive and dramatic” double-digit percentage point growth from 1957 to 1963, the report read, and a “full collegiate opportunity” in the area would keep students from going elsewhere. Of second importance was the bursting enrollment in the UW-system elsewhere.
Seidl said he first read of the university site selection on Dec. 3, 1965 in the Press-Gazette, according to court documents.
“University Site Requirements Detailed by Study Committee” was the largest headline on the front page of that day’s paper. It was the second state investigation into a potential university site. The committee would hold public hearings on its draft criteria later that month, then would receive formal proposals with a decision made in early 1966.
Seidl commuted daily from his house in Luxemburg to Green Bay on State 54-57. Along his path was the debt-ridden Shorewood Country Club, of which he was a member. Seidl wondered, according to papers written by Woessner, if the property with “a commanding view of the bay, varied woods of oak and hickory” would suit the committee’s taste.
Seidl requested a paper copy of the draft criteria and marked it up. He put a check mark next to “located within or next to adjacent areas of community.” He noted in the margin “W.P.S. bus lines.” He checked next to “rectangular shape.” He underlined “interesting topography with varied terrain, vegetation, next to body of water.”
“Green Bay address a worldwide known city,” he wrote in the margin.
Under the criteria for site costs, he wrote “Long-term options.”
Seidl began to go around to the property owners to collect long-term options and contracts for what he called the “Shorewood Site,” and what would officially be called “Alternate Brown County Farm Site.” None of the property owners were immediately interested, Seidl told Woessner, until he told them of the purpose.
Archived court documents show Seidl amassed 543 acres of land and a $51,072 commission from 11 properties between Dec. 1, 1965 and February 27, 1966 for $516,400. The 135-acre Shorewood Golf Course would be liquidated by its board of directors.
Seidl recalled regional committee members were “understandably fearful that if Green Bay did not unite to focus on the Larsen site, the state might look more favorably on a location closer to Kaukauna.” He said a local committee member told him, “You have a nice site, but you are wasting your time.”
The state committee was set to visit the seven potential campus locations in Brown County by bus on Feb. 8, 1966.
Seidl said he was told, “Sorry, Len. We are short of time and we can’t go by the Shorewood site.” Who told Seidl this, Woessner did not specify. An archived itinerary for the day, planned to the minute, showed the six-minute stop at the Shorewood site was crossed out.
Woessner’s documentation of Seidl’s memory did not mention that the committee still went by the Shorewood site.
It was rainy, windy, and cold, several documents noted. The bus stopped on the escarpment overlooking the golf course and the bay. Several committee members did not get off and looked out from the bus windows, said Anderson.
Seidl remembered committee members were given a police car tour of the Larsen site, bags of apples from its orchard, and a “pro-Larsen presentation” over lunch by the Oneida Golf and Country Club.
“I was frustrated because I had a beautiful and unusual site on the bay, but no one seemed interested,” Seidl told Woessner, except for then-Mayor Donald Tilleman who was concerned a campus would hinder planned industrial growth on the west side.
Official reports were more neutral. The site group was “noncommittal,” the Press-Gazette reported the following day. Seidl also noted that later in February, the head of the state site selection committee did not give him any indication of a preferred site, despite Seidl’s extensive lobbying. He’d driven down to Milwaukee in a blizzard for a meeting with the committee head despite being told such an action was not necessary.
The site selection committee report came out Feb. 25, 1966. Most of the locations, the report said, would be suitable for a campus. None fulfilled them all. Some however, “very well satisfied most of the criteria. So the committee focused on factors of greatest importance.” The campus must be centrally located in northeastern Wisconsin. It had to have “long-range considerations.” It must be close to the existing two-year college. It had to be aesthetically pleasing. And it must be accessible to the greatest number of students.
The Shorewood site was unanimously chosen. The committee remarked its location in Green Bay. There were 535 acres of land that could immediately be given to the state with the option to buy more, guaranteeing long-term campus growth. It was the closest of any site to the existing two-year college. It was also beautiful.
“A properly planned development on the Shorewood site,” the report read, “will produce one of the most attractive university campuses in the nation.”
Seidl would not get to enjoy the decision. City of Appleton took Seidl to court, accusing him of having a back door into the selection process, allegations that were later dropped. Some accused Seidl of chicanery and profiteering. Some prominent locals wanted to reverse the decision and move the campus to the Larsen site, which was also dropped.
He would think about the consequences for four decades despite other achievements ― selling the land to become the East Town Mall, pulling together Allouez’s Langlade Park, and keeping open the doors of Seidl and Associates.
Andersen never asked the intentions behind Seidl’s work pulling the proposal together, and she never got to. He died in 2015, the year of UWGB’s 50th anniversary.
(This article was updated to correct a misspelling.)
Do you have a question about Green Bay? Send them to Jesse Lin at 920-834-4250 or jlin@gannett.com for an answer every week.
Source: UWGB campus in Green Bay was a last-minute bid and not guaranteed