Hurdle One Cleared: UDC Gives Initial Approval to Occupy Madison

It was a weird meeting, but we got initial approval.

Staff recommended that they give us both initial and final approval and that that just have the staff approve the landscaping plan. We didn’t have it done because it is for final approval and you need to have a landscape architect do the work and we didn’t want to pay for the work until we were sure we needed it. We were ok with just initial approval but encouraged by the offer by staff.

Dick Wagner, the chair and DMI member of course, had something else in mind. Obstructionism is all I can call it. We did our presentation, I’ll admit we were not exactly on the top of our game, but we got through it. Alder Lauren Cnare moved initial approval. Other members of the body asked us questions like:
– Why doesn’t staff want the doors on the hitch end of the house? (answer: Planning Director wanted it)
– Why is there so much cement with the extra road in the back (answer: fire department wanted the road) and the entry (answer: traffic engineering requirements)
– Don’t use natural stone for the planters (answer: they will likely be wood, that was just the computer program we did) and be more artful.
– Make the fence less busy.

That was about it. There were 4 people from the neighborhood who testified against us. Their concerns were that they wanted the sitting circle gone (we already agreed), they wanted a fence in the front of the project, they want the sign to say OM Build instead of Occupy Madison, they are concerned about noise, they want the fence done before we move the houses there, they want trees on E. Johnson St., they don’t think there should be a “campground” in this location and they think that this should be lower density housing according to the neighborhood plan.

No surprises, we did try to address several of the concerns from the neighborhood, but apparently that was a huge problem for the obstructionist. Should we have just ignored them? When we did our presentation we told them that instead of a sitting circle up front, we would put art and planters there. We also moved the garbage closer to the building and greenhouse closer to the road and freed up one parking spot to help the neighborhood concerns. We met with the neighborhood association twice, held two large neighborhood meetings with the alder, held a small meeting with immediate neighbors with the alder and had one last larger neighborhood meeting on Monday and brought the tiny house. (Put out 500 flyers, about 30 people showed up.) We also did the work to show the initial bathroom configuration. This greatly upset Mr. Wagner because we didn’t have a site plan. Clearly, we had a site plan, but it wasn’t updated because, sigh, the staff told us not to. And we listened to staff. Staff and Wagner kind of got into it during the meeting. Staff said they told us not to because they didn’t want conflicting plans being circulated and that there were “bigger fish to fry” on this project and if we are down to arguing about where the garbage goes, we were probably doing very well at this point.

Cnare and another member wanted to make it really clear what they were requesting from us. Cnare asked first, Wagner said it was all reflected in the record. Dawn O’Kroley asked a second time about being specific about what they wanted from us, but Wagner again said that was not necessary. Wagner kept harping on the fact that we didn’t have a “site plan” (see materials here, including a site plan). What O’Kroley and Cnare did request was that we have a phasing plan before we went to Plan Commission, and although staff told us we did not need that and that he phasing could be worked out afterwards, we will do that by Monday. I found Wagner to be highly inappropriate in his chairing of the meeting, running over members of the committee when they made requests that different with his and being almost belligerent with staff over a technicality that would be overlooked on projects like the Edgewater. Our project is so small, the fact that we were even at Urban Design was confusing to the members when we went for our informational and our change was very simple. If they wanted, they could have approved it as submitted, it would not have been the end of the world for us. When we go back, we will re-label the trash and greenhouse and make the circle a box if that will make things better. Obviously, we have more work to do for final approval, we understand that, but that is why its final approval.

I guess if this was the big controversy about our project, staff is absolutely right, we are in great shape. We’ll see what happens at plan commission on Monday and the council on May 6th. But it looks like we are on the road to approval, since that is the recommendation from staff. If you like our project, emailing the plan commission members and council members would be welcome.

Plan Commissioners
bacantrell@charter.net
erics@cows.org
kenopin@ameritech.net
district2@cityofmadison.com
mcsheppard@madisoncollege.edu
melissaberger2@gmail.com
michael.heifetz@deancare.com
hiwayman@chorus.net
district8@cityofmadison.com
district7@cityofmadison.com
tonyalhn@aol.com

Brad Cantrell, Eric Sundquist, Ken Opin, Ledell Zellers, Maurice Sheppard, Michael Heifetz, Michael Rewey, Scott Resnick, Steve King and Tonya Hamilton Nesbit are the names of the plan commissioners, their emails are in this order above.

To email the alders you can email allalders@cityofmadison.com but it is best to email your own alder individually as well and include your address so they know you are from Madison and what district you are in. Alders emails can be found here. The pattern is district(insert # here, aka 1, 12, 18)@cityofmadison.com. So, example, district6@cityofmadison.com.

Just say why you think the project is good in the big picture and if you have something specific to say about the site, that is welcome too.