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Mayor John Antaramian talks about the proposed development for Downtown at his office in City Hall on May 11.
Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian has announced he will not seek re-election next year when his term ends next year.
Antaramian, who turns 69 this year, spoke with the Kenosha News about his decision in his third-floor office in the Municipal Building about his legacy, regrets and advice for whoever becomes the mayor of the state’s fourth-largest city.
A Kenosha native, he was first elected to the position in 1992 and served for 16 years before stepping down. Following eight years in the private sector, Antaramian was elected mayor again in 2016 and won re-election in 2020. His current term will expire in April 2024. Before becoming mayor in 1992 he served about a decade in the State Assembly representing the area.
“Communities only have two ways to go, forward and backward,” Antaramian said. “We’ve been moving forward and we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us.”
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When did you decide not to seek re-election?I’ve known for quite a while that I more than likely wasn’t going to run.
As much as I’ve enjoyed this — and there are so many neat things going on in this community and you would like to always be there when more things happen — you also have to come to a point in time where it’s time for someone else to take over. It’s time for someone else to see what they can do. I believe I have left the community in a better way than when I found it. The community will still move forward and we have a lot of opportunity in front of us.
Some politicians continue serving in their 70s and 80s. Why not you? My intention is to spend more time with (my wife) Linda and do some things that we always wanted to do together. And with this job it doesn’t give you the ability to all of a sudden just go and take large periods of time off. There are things we want to go off and do together. That played a major role.
In the last year I pretty much made the decision that I was not going to run. Still, there’s always a part of you that wants to see things finished and we have so many things started. But you know that that’s always the way it’s going to be no matter if I decided to leave now or if I left in four years from now. There would still be things that I would want to see happening. It’s just the nature of what we do.
Would you ever leave Kenosha?
This is where my friends are, this is where I’ve grown up, this is where my family is. Everything that’s important to me is in this town which is one of the reasons that I became mayor.
What are you most proud of from your time as mayor?
That’s an interesting question.
At different times I would tell you different things that I’ve been proud of.
I will tell you, one of the areas I’m most proud of right now is the Chrysler site and the innovation center we’re going to move forward with.
And I’ll tell you why that becomes so important to me. When I came back in 2016 and ran for mayor one of the reasons I ran was because we were losing our young people. Our young people weren’t staying in Kenosha.
We looked at what we needed to do to make it so that young people stay here, and the innovation center is one of those key elements that I believe is going to make it so that young people stay in Kenosha, start their own businesses in Kenosha, (and) get satisfaction from different types of jobs that we are now starting to bring into the community.
All of that, to me, is probably the most important thing that we can accomplish. So getting the innovation center off the ground, getting young people and individuals to start their own companies, those type of renovations in the Uptown area, with the Chrysler site being a focus, to me is one of the most important things that we can accomplish.
Oh, there are always regrets.
I’ve always regretted that I never was able to get a Revolutionary War museum in Kenosha. I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to succeed in getting the performing arts center in Kenosha. Those are things that I think would have been very, very positive things.
I think, though, when you look at regrets, it’s not so much a regret of what we couldn’t do. It’s a regret of what occurred. And that deals with the riots in 2020.
What do you feel looking back at that time?
It is a point in time that was a dark point for our community and we responded. We responded in a positive way to move forward. And that’s what you need to do.
There’s nothing I can do to fix what occurred, or change what occurred, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make things so that we do a better job in the future as to those types of things are not happening. Again, a lot of that occurred because of other factors, not necessarily factors from the city itself.
Will you endorse anyone for mayor?
We’ll see what happens later on. At this point in time, my intention is to allow the candidates to come out and see who runs and see what happens.
If you’re going to run for mayor have a vision. What is it you want your community to be? Because, as I said before, there’s only two directions that you go — forward and backward. There is no, ‘”Well, if we leave it the way it is, we’ll be fine.” No, if you leave it the way you fall back. You need to constantly be moving forward.
You have set a lot of projects in motion. Are you concerned that the next mayor may not be so passionate about them?
That’s always a possibility. I’d like to think, though, that we have set these projects up in a way that they’re going to move forward. I am confident with the agreement with the Downtown plan that’s going to move forward. I have every faith in the project at the Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood at the Chrysler site.
Do I believe they’re going to move forward? Yes.
