Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Adam Gerol last week dismissed a lawsuit filed against the City of Port Washington by Mequon developer Cindy Shaffer, whose plans to create a large subdivision on the community’s far west side were lauded by officials initially but fell through after 17 months of negotiations.
A piece in the April 2, 2026 issue of the Ozaukee Press covered the dismissal. According to the story:
While Shaffer argued that the city did not negotiate in good faith, Gerol disagreed, saying the fact the city continued to extend the deadline for negotiations well beyond the original date showed officials wanted to make a deal.
The hour-long hearing on Friday March 27 centered around a motion by the city to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Shaffer’s company, Shaffer Development. In the lawsuit, Shaffer sought more than $4 million.
The lawsuit alleged that the two sides negotiated a purchase agreement that called for Shaffer to buy the land for $1 million, but it was contingent on the city and Shaffer approving a development agreement.
Her plan was to create The Farm, a 263-home subdivision that would have included small, economically priced single-family homes and rental units within a walkable neighborhood with traditional features found in the city’s neighborhoods. The neighborhood, which was to include amenities such as community gardens, a hydroponic vertical farm, pollinator gardens and more, would have taken five years to build, she estimated.
Shaffer and the city spent nine months working on the agreement, and the final deadline of March 21, 2025, passed without an agreement being reached. After a March 18 closed session, the council stopped negotiating “without any explanation or reason,” according to the lawsuit, even through Shaffer had requested a deadline extension.
“The city, in its refusal to act and refusal to provide any explanation to cease negotiations, breached the express and implied terms of the offer to purchase,” the suit stated.
Shaffer contended the city was seeking “numerous unreasonable terms” in the negotiations. She said failure to move ahead with the project cost her about $200,000 in “hard costs” and a potential $4 million in profits she stood to make on the development.
Shaffer filed an open records complaint against the city, saying she requested but has not received records, including materials, notes and agreements from the March 18, 2025, closed session of the Common Council as well as other closed sessions dealing with her proposed project in an attempt to understand why the city ended negotiations.
