Tom Cooper has been buying land in Wonder Lake for years. He says he just wants a ‘viable business district.’

Tom Cooper did not have a relative die in a drunken-driving crash, and he doesn’t hate bars and alcohol.

The 81-year-old Wonder Lake resident said he also doesn’t have grand plans to tear down his Hancock Drive commercial buildings to build condominium towers.

Those are just two of the rumors that have floated around the town, Cooper said while sitting down with a reporter at the Master Property Owners Association in downtown Wonder Lake.

In fact, the condo rumor likely started while he was sitting with a friend who has since died in one of those bars years ago.

“They started many of the rumors around Wonder Lake,” Cooper said at one of its drinking establishments.

There are things that are true about Cooper. He is a very private man who doesn’t particularly like the media and who has bought properties – including closed bars - in Wonder Lake over the years.

He said he’s purchased homes to tear them down; properly abandon the land’s well and septic; and donate the property either to the Nippersink Watershed Association, for which he serves on the board, or to the village.

Cooper declined to be photographed for this story.

There are rumors that [Cooper] has some grandiose plan, that he is pulling the strings of the village. I am adamant to tell them that is not the case.”

—  Dan Dycus, Wonder Lake Village Board president

Cooper’s private nature and reluctance to talk about why he bought property has left a gap for the rumor mill to flow into.

“There are rumors that he has some grandiose plan, that he is pulling the strings of the village. I am adamant to tell them that is not the case,” Wonder Lake Village Board President Dan Dycus said.

What Cooper is doing, Dycus said, is “making massive investments” into the village and the lake. “There is so much negativity toward him despite all of the good things he has put time and money into happening here.”

Cooper’s connections to the town go back to his childhood, when his family spent summers, winters and vacations at the family lake home. Cooper has been a permanent resident – living in that family house – since 1985.

“I didn’t realize at that time that it would be permanent,” Cooper said of the move.

After retiring from the Scot Forge Co. 20 years ago, he started buying property but had “no intention of being where it is today,” Cooper said.

His first foray was trying to purchase, with a group of investors, Wonder Marine. That is a different entity from the present Wonder Lake Marina, but the buyout was never completed.

Cooper came out of the deal with 200 feet of shorefront on the private lake near Hancock and East Lake Shore drives. He stores boats there for the fire and police departments and allows friends to dock their boats at no cost.

That lake frontage may end up being the home of a Wonder Lake sanitary sewer lift station if Hancock Drive is annexed to Wonder Lake to receive city sewer and water services.

Cooper has been one of the driving forces for that annexation attempt.

When asked what the land would cost the village, Cooper said it would be given to the town for free.

Over the years, as businesses on Hancock Drive closed, Cooper purchased the buildings. He said he never bought property that had an active business in it.

When he bought the closed Das Bier Haus, he’d hoped the building could become a library and community center. Those plans never came to fruition, as no library district was interested, he said.

Next came the Dockside restaurant. Like all downtown commercial property, the Dockside septic systems are undersized for a modern restaurant, Cooper said.

“It is a series of tanks that has to be pumped on a regular basis,” he said, adding that water use has to be measured down to the gallon to prevent the septic from overflowing.

He said by purchasing the commercial properties, he could ensure the buildings don’t deteriorate.

Although many of his properties sit empty, Cooper continues to maintain them. He is waiting for the day when they will be connected to municipal water and sewer for a sale.

To understand why septic issues are common to the village, one must understand how it was developed. It was 1929, and the Wonder Lake Real Estate Syndicate planned to flood and dam a portion of Nippersink Creek to create a man-made lake. The intent, Cooper said, was to create weekend homes similar to those at Lake Geneva.

But the stock market crashed. Homes were not built on the originally platted lots. Instead, small houses were constructed on small lots with undersized septic systems in subsequent years.

“Wonder Lake is handicapped by having an abundance of houses that were never intended to be full time, supporting families on well and septic” year-round, Cooper said.

At two of the houses he bought to tear down, there was no visible well.

“They were found when we dug up the septic system” and were within feet of each other, Cooper said.

It’s not uncommon, Dycus said, to find the “septic system” on some of the older homes to be little more than a 55-gallon drum.

Wonder Lake was not incorporated as a village until 1974. There are almost 5,000 residents in the incorporated parts of the area known as Wonder Lake and about as many residents who live in the unincorporated subdivisions. Much of the development occurred with little oversight.

If the Hancock Drive annexation happens, Dycus hopes to see the properties on public water and sewer within three years. The village continues to seek grant funding, and believes grants could pay 50% to 80% of the costs to connect and abandon existing systems.

Stubs built into the Hancock Drive lines would further connections to the new wastewater treatment plant built for the village by developers of Stonewater, the subdivision expected to bring 10,000 new residents. The treatment plant started operating in 2021 and is already being expanded, Dycus said.

When the downtown addresses connect to municipal services, they can become viable, operating businesses, Cooper said.

But he has no grand plan for what the village should seek to put in those locations, he said.

“I just want to see it be a viable business district. It should be the center of Wonder Lake. Not the west side of the lake, not Stonewater,” he said. “This is the ‘wonder’ center, the center of Wonder Lake.”