$2,686,061 over 25 years
Milwaukee County would receive nearly $2.7 million in revenue from the Milwaukee Yacht Club over 25 years under the terms of a new contract.
When the City of Milwaukee turned over McKinley Park to Milwaukee County in the 1930s, the lakefront park came with a deed restriction that required the Milwaukee Yacht Club to “be permitted the occupancy of its present site.”
The requirement eventually led to a lease agreement in 1966, which was extended in 1994. The 1994 deal ran for 25 years and included one 25-year extension. The two sides were only supposed to renegotiate rent if the agreement was extended in 2017, but the parties instead decided to open up the entire deal in an effort to modernize it.
2 to 3%
The new contract also includes a provision to increase rent annually based on inflation. The rent automatically increases at least 2 percent, but if the Consumer Price Index is higher than 2 percent, the rent would increase by that amount, with a cap at 3 percent. If inflation were to reach 10 percent during the contract, the county and the yacht club would be able to reopen negotiations. Hitting the 3 percent cap every year would push the county’s revenue to more than $3 million.
100 parking passes
About one-third of the rent paid to the county comes from 100 parking passes the Milwaukee Yacht Club is paying for at McKinley Marina. The club started buying those passes as part of the 1994 lease agreement.
The club can also offset its rent payments with capital improvements to the building with the county’s approval – a departure from the previous deal, when the planned maintenance was estimated upfront. The deal excludes improvements to windows or docks from counting toward capital expenditures that could offset the rent.
