The Platteville Common Council was supposed to award bids for the 12 houses formerly owned by Darrel Kallembach.
That will be on the agenda for a September meeting instead, after the council voted 6–1 to table consideration of the bids.
The vote came after at-large Ald. Amy Seeboth-Wilson asked, “Have we actually gone through all 90 and ranked them individually? Because that’s what we promised we’d do.”
The city received 88 bids, 69 of which met the minimum bid price for that property. The city also got two bids to purchase all 12 properties, one of which met the exact $236,000 of all 12 houses’ minimum bids.
The bid documents state that the city “will select the proposals that are determined to be the most advantageous to the community. This may include proposals that do not include the highest bid amount.”
Seeboth-Wilson and at-large Ald. Mike Denn and three city staff members reviewed the bids Tuesday in closed session.
At-large Ald. Dick Bonin voted against the tabling, saying, “Don’t you think we [dragged] this on long enough? Let’s get rid of them.”
Nine of the 12 houses had the same highest bidder — Rigafellers Enterprises LLC of Sun Prairie, which in each case states it would “renovate and restore the property for rental or for sale as a single-family home.” The properties on which Rigafellers was not the highest bidder were both Southwest Road houses and the County B house.
Rigafellers was one of four bidders to place bids on every houses. The other three were River to Valley Initiatives of Prairie du Chien, John and Dustan Duggan, and JPC Castle Enterprises LLC. JPC submitted the lowest bid on every property, and none of its bids met the minimum bid. The Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development placed a bid equal to the minimum bid on each house for all 12 houses.
The next most common bidder was Leonard Kallembach, Darrel’s father, who bid on nine of the houses, in each case to be used as a single-family rental. Droessler Properties LLC placed bids on five houses, with two options on one. Professional Properties LLC bid on three houses individually, in addition to the $120,000 bid for all 12 houses.
The most popular house for bids was the house at 440 Southwest Road, which received 15 bids, 13 of them at or above the minimum bid. River to Valley Initiatives’ bid specified demolishing the house, along with the house at 420 Southwest Road, and building a three-unit townhouse on the combined lots. The other bids called for renovating the property, either for ownership by the bidder or as a rental.
Two houses — 260 S. Chestnut St. and 335 Division St. — got just four bids each, three each of which met the minimum bid.
Most of the bids called for renovating the existing property. The house at 185 Center St. got two bids to demolish the house and replace it with a single-family house, one owner-occupied, one as a rental. The house at 255 Division St. got two bids to demolish the house, one of which as an owner-occupied house, one to demolish a house and rehabilitate the garage for the use of the next-door home owner. The house at 375 Irene St. got two bids to demolish the house, one to replace it with a four-bedroom rental house, one to replace it with a duplex. The house at 1536 County B also got a bid to replace the house with a new owner-occupied house.
