Greg Armstrong, the former director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, saw it coming.
He knew that when the Fitchburg City Council approved the upper-crust Harlan Hills subdivision in 1998 – shortly after Fitchburg residents had voted not to borrow $750,000 to help purchase the 73-acre site just east of Seminole Highway – it was yet another setback for the Arboretum’s prized but ecologically fragile Greene Prairie.