By Chris Mertes
Managing Editor, The Star

Local developer Herman Kraus, along with Sun Prairie Mayor Dave Hanneman and other officials, on Friday, June 4 officially broke ground for a unique fund-raiser to help the Wisconsin Patient Alliance for Neurological Disorders Assistance (PANDA).

The organization was in need of a comprehensive health care clinic. Because fund-raising was the first step, they approached Kraus of Kraus Homes for some help and the idea of the PANDA house was born.

PANDA House is being built through the generous donations of time and materials of many contractors and suppliers. The PANDA house is located at 1108 Patriot Way in Liberty Square, one of several of Sun Prairie's traditional neighborhoods currently under construction.

The house will go up for sale in the near future. After the home is sold, and the bills are paid, Kraus predicted the PANDA project will net more than $125,000.

“I'm very proud of the generosity of the contractors I work with,” Kraus said. “It amazes me that when there's a need in the community, people are so willing to help.”

Approximately 15,000 people in Dane County live with illnesses such as Lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Gulf War Syndrome. All too often, these patients with debilitating and sometimes life-threatening symptoms are misdiagnosed or under served by the medical community.

With a timely and correct diagnosis, intervention is much more successful and cost-effective. Many of these patients feel their lives slipping by unnoticed. With proper care, they might be able to live their lives as they choose, as productive members of society.

For more information on PANDA and the PANDA House go to www.panda-clinic.com. The state office for the Wisconsin Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) Association is in Sun Prairie where you can reach Pat Fero, Executive Director at (608) 834-1001 or www.wicfs-me.org.

Fero, also present for the groundbreaking ceremony, praised Kraus for his contribution to the PANDA house project.

“We’ve been looking a long time as an association . . . (at) what can we do to be a help to people faster . . . so now it’s a matter of this huge dream -- if you build it, they will come . . .

“We’re getting a lot of public relations because of the fact that we’re taking a risk (using the proceeds from the home sale to build a clinic),” Fero said, “but we’ll end up with a chunk of money, thanks to the Kraus team and the community of Sun Prairie -- we can say we built this.”

Fero said it was “ a dream” to have such a generous effort to aid the PANDA project.

“What we can do is very carefully guard those funds -- our association rubs a nickel to get a quarter, and we’re hoping that because of the support we have nationally, the clinic that’s eventually developed will be state-of-the-art,” Fero said.

The $125,000 is “big bucks towards a health care project right now,” Fero said. “It’s wonderful.” Fero called the contributions “overwhelming.”

“Chris and Herman (Kraus) and the team and all of the collaborators, although they might not know much about the PANDA idea, have just stood in line,” Fero said. “And it’s pretty amazing. I’ve not been a part of something that’s this positive in the past.”

The project is a tremendous community effort, Fero said. “It’s overwhelming to me when Chris and Herman said, ‘well, we’ll build a house’. So it’s unusual in that sense. We thought of a raffle  -- that was the idea, but Herman felt that was too much work (and this idea evolved).”

Herman and Chris Kraus together with PANDA  thanked the following businesses for their generous donation to the PANDA House: AB Electric, American TV, Art's Computer Service, B&E Heating, Birrenkott Surveying Inc.;

Chase Lumber Company, Dave Jones Plumbing, Dean's Top Shop, E. P. McMahon & Sons, Inc., Epic Building Systems, ERA Kraus Real Estate, Excalibur Homes LLC;

Fireside Hearth & Home, First Federal, Grade A Construction, Jung's Garden Center, Hellenbrand Landscaping Partnership, Lawyer's Title Insurance Co.;

Liberty Square, Milwaukee Insulation Co., Prairie Home Products, Ridge Top Roofers, Ritter Insurance Agency, Spahn Inc., Tip Top LLC and Zander Solutions, LLC.

Liberty Square grand opening is set July 8-11

Additional information and floor plans of the PANDA House will be available during the Grand Opening of Liberty Square, July 8-11. Liberty Square is a new Sun Prairie Traditional Neighborhood of 140 acres located on Sun Prairie’s north side along the east side of North Bird Street past the Prairie Athletic Club. Liberty Square offers many diverse housing choices from townhouse, rowhouse and ranch condominiums to single family homes on garden and estate lots.

The neighborhood will feature a 12 acre park, 95 senior apartment units, greenspace, outlots, bike trails, walking paths and an area of neighborhood friendly shops.

“When it’s all done, there will be 680 units,” Kraus said, when asked for an update on construction of both phases of the project simultaneously.

“What we’ve got going right now is some twin homes, which are condominiums -- that mostly what we have are condominiums.

“We have some single family homes, then we have senior housing -- senior apartments,” Kraus added. “We just finished an assisted living (Haack’s Tendercare, located at 1176 School St.), down here on the corner.”

Kraus predicted the remainder of Liberty Square will be constructed at least through 2006 and possibly into 2007.

“What we’ve got going on right here will probably take us oh, another two years or a year and one-half,” Kraus predicted. “We’ve got to go all the way down Liberty Boulevard, and we’re just finishing that road right now.”

Kraus recalled the philosophy behind Liberty Square -- a philosophy he initially described to the Sun Prairie Plan Commission while proposing the development.

“I think what I’m trying to do is bring it back to more of a -- for lack of a better word -- a traditional neighborhood, where it’s a walking community and people get to know each other.

“It’s going to cut down on the traffic. If you go around town, you see people putting up these ‘slow down’ signs -- well, just by the very nature of these (boulevard, narrowed) streets, people are going to slow down,” Kraus predicted.

“The other thing -- I think you’re using the land (better because) you’re getting more density out of the land so you’re not just burning up all the farm land that you’re working with,” Kraus said.

The developer also said there is a degree of control with Liberty Square that he’s not used to having with other projects.

“It’s easier to control the architecture because you’re confining yourself to one area and not spreading out.

“This way I spend more time on the details -- the porches and all the things that go into it to try to make it a much warmer feel in the plat than just seeing garages.”

As for the reception he’s received with Liberty Square, Kraus said, “Very good. We’ve been doing real well. With our twin homes down here, I think we’ve got four or five of those sold right now and one of our condos down here has an offer on it.

“We’re going to have a grand opening in July, so that’s going to tell us a lot more,” Kraus said.

But the developer said Liberty Square also has its drawbacks, too.

“From a developer’s standpoint, it’s really hard to keep control of everything to make it be what you want it to be, “ Kraus said.

“Because when you’re selling a lot and building for a person, as long as it meets the deed restrictions, it’s not that you don’t care, but it’s theirs.

“Here, because you have so many rules that you put in place, and to make sure that you keep staying on that, and just watching everything -- it takes a lot more work than I thought.

“But the net result,” Kraus concluded in reference to Liberty Square, “should be far superior when we get done.”

The Star is Sun Prairie's weekly newspaper. 6/09/04