Tyler Ignatowski, owner of Igna Real Estate & Investments LLC, had some choice words for the Stevens Point Common Council in response to recent claims from alderpersons of his being an “absentee landlord,” claims that were made during the Plan Commission’s review of a proposed apartment building on the corner of Doolittle Drive and Wilshire Boulevard.

Igna Real Estate & Investments LLC plans to construct a 12-unit, 36-bedroom, two-story apartment building at 3600 Doolittle Drive, Stevens Point, to expand the housing stock for college students and young professionals.

During the Plan Commission meeting Tuesday, Jan. 3, alderpersons Cathy Dugan, District 8, and Garrett Ryan, District 3, and Old Main Neighborhood Association (OMNA) representative Cindy Nebel spoke out against its construction, claiming the properties now owned by Ignatowski are historically troublesome areas.

Dugan claimed she counted 120 violations on the properties over the past four years.

As a result, the Plan Commission recommended approval of the conditional-use permit to construct the apartment building, but included a two-year review stipulation most rental developers aren’t typically burdened with.

The Council voted 6-2-3 to uphold the Plan Commission’s recommendation to grant the conditional-use permit with a review of property performance after two years.

In favor of the motion were Mary McComb, District 9; Slowinski; Meleesa Johnson, District 5; Heidi Oberstadt, District 4; David Shorr, District 2; and George Doxtator, District 1. Voting against the motion were Shaun Morrow, District 11; and Ryan.

Mary Kneebone, District 7, and Cathy Dugan, District 8, were excused and Mike Phillips, District 10, was filling in as chairman – a non-voting position – as Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza was excused.

Ignatowski said the information presented was both misinformed and in some cases outright incorrect as the violation count included many from previous owners.

“I propose to pass the apartment complex without the restrictive inspection contingencies because the decision was based on rumors and false accusations,” Ignatowski said. “I’ll first start by addressing the comments that were made at the (Plan Commission) meeting because decisions should be based on facts. Had these folks contacted my company, we could have addressed these concerns beforehand and avoided these issues. Several items from the meeting stuck out to me:

“There’s a claim that states there were 120 violations (in the past four years), this is incorrect. The actual number of violations for the properties we own was 103. As I appreciate your concerns, I really do, I think more research needs to be done more thoroughly. Forty-four of those violations happened before we owned the properties.

“This leaves us with 59 violations. Of the 59 violations, nine of them were from tenants that we inherited when we first purchased the property, and citations were given in the first two months. This leaves us with 50 violations due to our tenants. We own 112 units on 34 properties in Stevens Point, 17 properties have never received a violation. Seven properties had numerous violations before we owned them, but since purchasing them they’ve had zero.

“So this means that out of 34 properties, 24 have never received a violation … So, out of the 10 remaining properties, four properties we have decreased violations from prior years and two properties have stayed the same. This leaves us with four properties which have 36 of our 50 violations.

“These four properties happen to be in District 3. Four places accounting for 72 percent of the violations. But when we looked closer into District 3 as a whole compared to our violations, our number is very, very small. And I have all that documentation of every violation on every single street in (District 3),” he said.

Among the violations Igna Real Estate does have against it are mostly tenants’ failure to remove snow and ice, improper storage, leaving garbage bins by the road too long and two citations for grass and weed issues.

Six violations were for suspicion of having too many tenants living in any one particular unit – a violation focused on heavily by opposition at the Plan Commission meeting.

“Six violations, convicted of zero. Every time that someone has come out (to inspect), there’s been nothing wrong,” Ignatowski said.

The second accusation Ignatowski addressed was a claim that his company had not responded to a chronic nuisance violation or submitted an abatement plan, which showed a lack of communication with the community.

“This is untrue. An abatement plan was sent, but it was sent within 14 business days,” Ignatowski said. “As far as not wanting to communicate with the community, this is untrue. The wording was interpreted that we would have to release tenant information to the neighbors. Legally, we can’t do that and there were several things we needed review by our legal (counsel).

“After receiving full clarification of the task requested, we went further and already had in place the majority of recommended (abatement) measures,” he said. “We fixed the issues with our tenants directly and since implementing the new measures, we’ve had no other issues. And I have the documentation.”

Another accusation Ignatowski said he took personal issue with was the claim that he was an absentee landlord. He said Igna Real Estate & Investments is a Stevens Point family-owned and operated company.

He grew up in Stevens Point and loves the area, he said. He buys these notorious and blighted properties to fix them up and bring them back to a level of respectability. His employees and family are physically at the properties on a daily basis and residents and neighbors have several “local 715 numbers to call if they need anything at any time.”

Director of Community Development Michael Ostrowski said, “You can’t associate the violations that were prior to his ownership to Ignatowski. I also agree that if there were problem tenants in those properties and you inherit those tenants, that is also another challenge.”

“So, looking through the violations and taking a look at what the violations are for (is important). Snow and ice, grass – we don’t have a ton of egregious violations (against Igna Real Estate). We’ve got instances where there is a suspicion of over-occupancy, but none of them have ever been proven. So, I can’t count that as a violation. I think as of today, he only has one open violation from all of these violations, and that’s because he’s got a permit out to reside and reroof, so he is moving forward to take care of that issue,” Ostrowski said.

Ostrowski said single-family homes that get converted to rentals are historically more troublesome than apartment buildings, due to the physical configuration of the homes.

For example, he said, a house can legally fit four tenants, but only has three parking spaces. Then they run into problems with people parking on the yard.

“We typically don’t see a lot of violations on complexes. We just don’t,” he said.

Additionally, Ostrowski said this particular parcel of land Ignatowski wants to build the apartment building on can’t really be used for anything else due to its dimensions and location as a corner lot.

“By developing this property as proposed on Doolittle – I mean, I’m hearing a lot of concern about these older homes around campus being converted to student rentals – I guess I look at this development on Doolittle as pulling some of these occupants out of those areas and putting them into a more condensed area,” said Jeremy Slowinski, District 6. “In my mind, that improves that area around campus and hopefully (causing) some of these homes to convert back to single-family.

“It sounds like the applicant here has stuck some money into these properties trying to get them back up to respectable, and I look at this as a step in the right direction, and hopefully we can start cleaning up this area around campus,” Slowinski said.

Ryan asked Stevens Point Police Chief Martin Skibba to weigh in on the discussion of Igna Real Estate and the chronic nuisance ordinance violations against it.

“Regarding the abatement issue, it is a tool the council and city has to deal with issues, whether it’s commercial or residential properties. These are the first two that are dealing with residential. I would say we are being more proactive as we deal with these, so it doesn’t surprise me that we have a couple and I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more as, again, we’re being more proactive dealing with quality-of-life community issues,” Skibba said.

“With that said, part of the ordinance is very specific in requiring that we can determine the issue is resident (occupant)-based. So, that’s why we have these two particular (chronic nuisance issues) … and in working with the company, they are now dealing with it and addressing an abatement plan,” Skibba said.

“It’s not to say there aren’t issues, there are. But quite frankly, from a Police Department perspective, these are two different environments with two different realities. So, as a council, you’re going to have to decide how you want to do the King Solomon role and ‘split the baby,’ as it were,” he said. “Because you’re talking about two different rental environments … I’ve been here 26 years and single-family homes that are now rentals, anecdotally, are more problematic. I would suggest you deal with ordinances addressing those (types of properties) if we’re going to think long-term.”

In other words, if the city wants to address issues from student housing, the focus should be on cleaning up single-family homes that have been converted to rentals rather than apartment complexes because apartment buildings yield less problems, historically speaking.