WAUPUN — Mayor of Waupun Rohn Bishop invited the media to the intersection of Main and Madison Street for a short press conference to discuss his plans in improving the downtown district.
The primary building of concern is the former Golden Cup Cafe building at 400 E Main Street, one of the most prominent buildings in the downtown area.
Mayor Bishop also gave a radio interview with Greg Stensland Thursday morning to discuss the state of the building.
According to Mayor Bishop the building has sat empty for over five years since the Golden Cup Cafe shut down. The current occupants moved in about last November, and while they claim to have a “rent to own” agreement with the property owner, they are not currently paying rent according to the Mayor.
The fervor around code enforcement started about a month ago after members of the community brought it to public attention that the downstairs area—where the restaurant had been in business—was being used as a garbage dump by the tenants. While the tenants have started using city garbage services and cleaned some of it up, the City has begun scrutinizing the property due to the impact that its current state will have on the rest of the downtown area.
“The building has been looked at by more than one architect,” Mayor Bishop said. “There’s serious concerns about the stability of the building, and if it goes much longer without being maintained—if the building can be saved or if it’d have to be torn down—which would be bad for the downtown area since it’s the primary corner.”
The Mayor went on to give a long list of issues with the building—many visible without a hard inspection. These problems included the outdated sign, the sagging roof and wall, the leaking air conditioning units, the birds roosting on the wall, the cheap mismatched facade, and the trashed first floor. According to him, there’s a stack of papers a quarter inch thick with more code violations that the City has found on the building.
“It’s annoying and upsetting to me because we have several downtown business owners who are investing into our community,” Mayor Bishop said. “All you have to do is walk up and down main street and the bowling alley is getting fixed up real nice, Cassandra Verhages keeps her building looking good, you see how they’ve cleaned up the Our Bar, you see what Stone + Suede has done, Werner Harmsen always looks nice, Gysbers Jewelry Store is doubling in size, Wine and Unwined is doubling in size, the baseball card shop is doing phenomenal.”
“And then you’ve got this building which sticks out as an eyesore and the property owner across the street tells me he’d like to fix up his building but he’s waiting for something to happen at the Golden Cup building because having to look across the street is hurting the value of his building,” he continued.
“So we can’t just have this in the center of downtown falling in on itself and causing fly infestations, it’s just ugly and it’s hurting the entire community,” he said.
Many prominent buildings in downtown Waupun were in bad shape as recently as two years ago, but several have been renovated and turned into great assets to the downtown area, including Real Sportscards-Wisconsin, and Stone + Suede.
Real Sportscards is a collectable trading card business started by Tom Kulczewski in Brownsville in 2016. They moved into their current location at 324 E Main St in February 2022, which is across Madison street from the Golden Cup Cafe. Prior to Kulczewski purchasing the building, the upstairs was basically uninhabitable, but now it serves as one of the City’s favorite meeting spots for sportscard enthusiasts.
Stone + Suede is a boutique and design business in downtown Waupun who purchased the building at 417 E Main Street for $2,500 after it was condemned due to years of neglect as the C&J Rock Shop. They invested over $500,000 into the property to bring it up to code and start the boutique, for which they received a state redevelopment award last year.
Mayor Bishop believes that the City can force a similar sale in hopes of an investor repairing the main street cornerstone that used to be the Golden Cup Cafe.
“If the property owners aren’t going to do something with the buildings, then sell it so we can get people who want to invest in our downtown there,” Mayor Bishop said. “What I think you’re sensing in the community is that there’s a lot of frustration from other business owners over people who are sitting on these buildings and holding back progress.”
“Downtown Waupun is booming, it’s really pop, but we can’t work with some of these building owners if they’re just going to sit on this dilapidated stuff that hurts the whole community,” he said. “You look at the investment that the sportscards shop has done and the poor guy has got to look out the window at this stuff and it disgusts him every day.”
“If they’re not going to fix it up like now, then it’s time for the City to get real aggressive, because it’s ruining the whole downtown, and you just can’t have that,” Mayor Bishop added. “Waupun’s better than that, I expect better than that, so we’re going to be better than that.”
The City has started to take steps towards resolving the issues with these properties by ramping up code enforcement, which had been underutilized in previous years. Code enforcement officers and inspectors are going to be looking at these properties and documenting issues that could grow in the future unless they’re addressed.
Two other downtown buildings on North Madison Street are also in various states of neglect, including the former House of Handcrafters—historically Fletcher Studio—and the former Fox Computer and Networking building—most recently Warrior Nutrition.
Both Golden Cup and the former Fox Computer buildings have their original business signs on the front facades despite both having moved out years ago, which per city statutes must be removed within 30 days of the business vacating the building.
Correction 9/18/23 3:31PM: Added to include how much Stone + Suede invested in the property, over $500,000. A previous version of this article stated that they purchased the building for $2,300 and has been corrected to say $2,500 per owners.
