Port project proceeding

Vineyard, winery and housing development agreement approved

A high-end Port Washington housing development centered around a vineyard and winery is proceeding after a long delay.

The Port Washington Common Council approved a development agreement at its Tuesday night meeting for the $50 million project, known as Cedar Vineyard.

Developer Tom Swarthout plans to buy the 227-acre development site this month and begin selling home lots. The site, overlooking Lake Michigan, is now mostly farm land.

Swarthout, who operates Lake Forest, Ill.-based Highview Group Ltd., said Wednesday that construction on new homes could begin next spring.

Also, the vineyard will be planted next spring, with the winery to open in a relocated 140-year-old barn by summer.

“We’re excited to get this project going,” Swarthout said.

The Cedar Vineyard mixed-use development would feature 68 high-end homes and a vineyard east of Highway C, as well as five homes and a winery west of the highway near Stonecroft Drive.

Swarthout is planning lots with a minimum size of 15,000 square feet, selling for an average price of $300,000. Homes would range from 2,500 to 3,500 square feet, with expected values of $700,000 to nearly $1 million.

Parallel 44 Winery, near Kewaunee, would operate the vineyard and winery.

Also, 101 acres would be set aside as a nature preserve.

The development agreement amounts to a final public approval for $6 million in city cash for Cedar Vineyard.

The city would pay for new roads, sewers, water mains, a bike trail and other public improvements.

Property taxes from the new development would pay back those funds within 15 to 20 years. Once the city’s debt is paid off, the property taxes would flow to the city’s general fund, the Port Washington-Saukville School District and other local governments.

The project was first proposed in 2015, with hopes of beginning construction in 2016.

But there were delays in obtaining state and federal grants totaling $2 million to help pay for the nature preserve, which is to be owned eventually by Ozaukee County.

The Ozaukee Washington Land Trust is buying that 101-acre preserve from Swarthout for $2 million. His firm is providing $350,000 from assessments on the new homes to pay for the public preserve’s hiking trails and bridge across Cedar Heights Gorge.

The preserve, including 1.25 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, would be just north of the county-owned Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve.