2019 City of Madison Annual Planning Division Report

January 28, 2020 6:42 pm

Plan Commission was 6 hours Monday night, here’s the small portion where they got a report on 2019 City of Madison Planning activities.

This portion of the meeting is only about 5 minutes and starts about 6 minutes in to the video.

I’ve never seen an annual report for the planning division, at least not on an agenda, perhaps I’ve missed them, but this appears to be new. I dug around and I found no other planning division annual plans in legistar or on cityofmadison.com so I decided to see what Heather Stouder, the Planning Division Director, had to say about it!

Here’s the report. It’s a relatively quick read, 16 pages with lots of visuals and pictures.

PRESENTATION TO PLAN COMMISSION

Heather Stouder, the Planning Division Director says that the annual report is in their packets. She will share a few highlights. She thanks them for their work they did that is reflected in the plan. The Plan Commission, the Urban Design Commission, Madison Arts Commission, Landmarks Commission, Downtown Coordinating Committee and Joint Campus Area Committee are all the boards, committees and commissions that they staff and they appreciate all of the work done by all of you as volunteers.

In 2019 the city adopted 4 new sub-area plans including the W. Miffland/W. Washington plan known as Mifflandia. The Triangle Monona Bay plan also downtown. And on the far north east side of the city the Rattman Neighborhood Development Plan and the Nelson Neighborhood Development plans were completed. While they were doing that they were also moving forward with several other plans and the four that had the most substantial work done in 2019 that they will see adopted hopefully this coming year are the Oscar Mayer special area plan, the South Madison neighborhood plan, the Reiner Neighborhood Development Plan on the further north east side of the city and beyond city boundaries and the City’s Historic Preservation Plan. The first citywide historic preservation plan. Do expect to see more on those in the coming months.

She also wanted to mention that this year, based on a recommendation in the Oscar Mayer Strategic Assessment they took the time to put together the data and analysis to complete an Equitable Development Report. They looked at demographic data, housing costs at the census block group and census tract level across the city and tried to find ways to recognize areas of the city that were most susceptible to displacement of the current residents and then put forth some suggestions regarding policy options for getting ahead of displacement and to ensure that Madison’s residents have opportunities to stay in their neighborhoods or their homes if they choose to as the property values increase and our citywide growth continues. The plan commission and ultimately the council will see more policy direction soon on housing and the equitable development report feeds right into that and they hope to move forward on some high priority housing policies and continue expanding housing options throughout the city.

Stouder says that development approvals were on par with or maybe a little bit slower than 2018 with their housing units approved. Nearly 1800 new multi-family housing units and over 300 single family lots were approved. So those will be under construction in the coming years, sometimes it takes a few years between approval and completion of a project. Meanwhile nearly 900,000 square feet of commercial space and 500 new hotel rooms were approved in 2019 alone.

They had a great year for the arts, you will see a two-page spread with a lot of the public art shown in the report, significant additions to their long-term public art collection and also a new artist in residency program starting at Thurber Park which is actually in the Town of Blooming Grove, surrounded by the City. An exciting Phoenix from the Ashes project was completed this year, that was art created from ash trees that needed to be felled with regard to the Emerald Ash Borer and much of that art will end up being on display long term at the new Pinney Library opening in March.

Finally, with regard to Community Connections and Engagement, they had a very well attended neighborhood round table in November and that focused primarily on the need to expand housing opportunities in Madison. And then she notes that they continue to work very hard on preparing for the 2020 Census which will happen early April and can’t state enough how important a complete count is. It’s very important for fair representation and for federal support for housing, transportation and other essentials moving foward so they will continue to work on that this spring.

She offers that they can call her if they have questions or want to dig a little deeper into anything in the annual report.

Plan Commission Chair Ledell Zellers thanks Stouder and her staff as well as plan commission members for doing a great job in shepherding those project through and supporting the plan commission in our work.

QUESTIONS

None. No comments by the commissioners besides Zellers comments above.

OTHER ITEMS IN THE REPORT

Public Engagement

Meetings
- 106 planning processes
- 35 Development proposal neighborhood meetings
- 102 Commission meetings
Other
- 32 emails to projects with 569 recipients
- 823 social media followers
- 132,650 website visits
- 4,964 postcards sent