Ready for Part 2? Sorry I didn’t stick around for the end, I’ll just warn you now. Had another meeting to go to. See part 1 for background.
DISCUSSION ON KEY THREE
Al Zimmerman says this is one where he wishes he has “your” height map – he’s talking to Downtown Madison Inc. I believe.
Mark Clear says that increasing view and more height are conflicted, in many areas it is a trade off, doesn’t know what to do with that, he likes both.
Zimmerman asks if anyone has history behind the state law that fixes the height.
Brad Murphy says city adopted capital view preservation ordinance in 1966, that is when city recognized it, state legislature put it in state statutes in 1987. It is a plane, above the level of the peaks, 187.2 feet, equivalent with base of the columns on the capital, it extends out a mile and it’s that simple, only church spires and others limited things can exceed it.
Zimmerman says one of the thoughts to purvey is, a recommendation that we designate one section to have even higher height capability, challenging the state law. Maybe create a financial district so people could build a corporate office downtown, few areas could do that, that what makes it unattractive for Epic, or a large company can’t relocate to this area. It is important that we preserve the views and not create a table top, but we should designate one area to challenge that, for that type of development.
Ed Clarke asks how far the restrictions extend.
Murphy says 1 mile. Beyond the planning area for downtown, applies to 800 and 900 blocks of E Washington.
Zimmerman says that most people that would live downtown, know this because he lived in a downtown – won’t travel more than 15 minutes walk out, to eat there, there needs to be a segment of the city that allows a higher cityscape, maybe a set of blocks, but allow it in walking distance to get to square, Lake Monona or Mendota.
Clarke is not enthusiastic about that, thinks plan is too restrictive, there is a need to call for more density, he says that is the key to economic development and he isn’t too interested in having some of the views protected. He agrees with East and West Washington, but this is an unusual city, but its hard for him to imagine a financial district on the isthmus, it’s not big enough.
Julia Stone doesn’t have trouble imagining it, but pictures it on East Washington, why quibble over height here when we ignore East Washington, three blocks away. She talks about Portland’s plan where everything you need is within 14, 20 or 25 minutes, so you can get to it. That is the elephant – we just ignore that, if really trying to do something, East Washington is where we need to focus.
Murphy says that between Blair and First St we have recently adopted a very well thought out plan for the corridor that identifies a range of land uses and scale and massing recommendations adopted by the Common Council and fixed in the ordinance and the recent East Rail Corridor Plan, so the area beyond downtown has not been forgotten, we are just trying to better integrate downtown with other plans through transportation.
Stone says there is a lot of talk about density, she sees a three block difference, we discuss these buildings and not the bigger picture of where the density is.
Clear says cuz of terrain, cuz of view preservation limit, we could go 20 stories, or more in that area.
Murphy says Curt’s building was in excess of that.
Curt Brink says 370 feet.
Murphy says its at least 15 stories.
Clear says that if there is a financial district, it will not be in a section downtown, maybe a mid-town concept, maybe Hilldale if state redevelops the Hill Farm Campus. A second downtown.
Stone asks if there is going to be a different recommendations than this, she doesn’t know how to make suggestions.
Zimmerman says open up downtown to development for someone to bring a corporate level type environment here, these are people who will makes $200,000 to 300,000 and spend $200 to 300 on a dinner, buy coffee, buy things, so during the day, peak and nonpeak hours, and during the day Monday – Satusday and have a significant impact to local restaurants and businesses. Once you have a corporate headquarters, you can leverage it.
Clear asks how big he is talking? Half a million square feet?
Zimmerman says, like Exxon, they relocated to Las Gallinas, they did it cuz they couldn’t find suitable space (outside of Dallas), if there was a high rise downtown they would have gone there, we have had a couple of those ventures leave City of Madison, Epic built its own campus, if can get vertical space and keep it – we have two beautiful lakes, great views to do this.
Stone knows what he is saying, agrees to some point, she says we have to look at whole city, with that kind of vision there are parking and schools issues, we might have other areas besides downtown to do it.
Clear says that American Family area is the corporate district, Alliant Energy moved out of downtown, American Family was on East Washington.
Zimmerman says if kept it downtown, how much could you keep it downtown, how much cheaper could that space have been?
Clear said something I didn’t hear, but that he can’t see how they would put that space downtown.
Stone says parking – everyone who moves out of downtown says it is the cost of parking for the employee, Madison is unique, we don’t have that strong of a density structure, move a mile away and parking is 1/5 of the amount it is downtown. You talked about the reasons you don’t live downtown, she moved her business out, it was more than the rent.
Zimmerman moved out of downtown, if think 20 years out, that is s substantial period of time and density will draft and if allow it to grow, will pull peoele into the city, they will build parking.
Stone says that is an issue, parking a problem.
Sandi Torklidson says that if we want to have people living and working where they don’t need a car, we need other transportation alternatives, we need to look at transportation, not a bus every half hour but every 10 minutes like other cities, buses that run short distances, we can incorporate that, even if a few blocks away, also have to think about making enough density and housing that is attractive for people to live and work downtown and some of those issues will go away, people who live in New York City don’t drive.
Clarke talks about TRHIVE demographics. They compared Madison to Austin, Des Moine and Lincoln. One of the things we talked about and who would live downtown and walk to work, that is a younger demographic, that news about that population is not good. In the 25 – 34 age group, Madison is lowest percent of population, and worse, in last 10 years, that demographic is growing slower than the other cities. We are the lowest and growing slower than Austin, Des Moines and Lincoln.
Zimmerman says some of the businesses have moved out of the city, he’s hearing this is not the way we want to go, if Epic was downtown we would have a load of people, they wanted to live downtown and there really wasn’t anything, if the work and living is going to be downtown he recommends that instead of 12 stories, why not 20, 25 or 30.
Clear says you can do that outside the mile limit.
Zimmerman says lets challenge that.
Stone says she moved from a downtown area – but her husband wouldn’t live where couches are on the porches. We were limited where we could live, there are struggles and things that are good points. What are we hoping to accomplish with it, change wording?
Clarke says some of this is technical and they don’t have the expertise, Downtown Madison Inc. is doing a map and also retail and retail group downtown working on it and he is not sure when they will hear from them but maybe they should wait and look at those documents and look at what people who do this work do, he doesn’t have a specific recommendation, but we are not ambitious enough for a 20 year plan.
Clear says 1/3 to 1/2 of area is low density residential and that is an interesting land use for core downtown area in the city, single family houses or what were single family houses. In a lot of the area, Bassett and Langdon and Mansion Hill, almost half the physical square footage. He was also thinking about tobacco warehouse area, southwest corner least utilized by Findorff, there is now a proposal coming for new residential next to Findorff and Tobacco Lofts, but even the warehouse district on W Main seems like a potential if doing anything as wacky as what you are describing. He says just cuz its wacky he is not going to stop talking about it, would have to talk about view, but the utilization of the land, that is least utilized.
Zimmerman says that area could have a nice impact if if complimentary view impact with nice architecture, a business center would present nice entrance to the city as well and use that area pretty well – maybe no height recommendation, but look at recommendation 35 or 36 and establish a corridor in are you are talking about, that would extend above state law.
Clear says it is the closest to the edge of the area considered downtown.
Stone says if took the conversation outside of this, recommendations from staff, which areas could we do this, would that made sense, to understand our options, she thins reasonable idea.
Zimmerman asks why not have that downtown, why not challenge the limit.
Stone says we have areas with 12 stories already, it will just look really unbalanced, don’t know if ready to say it would be ok today, we are discussing this area, but there is more for use to discuss, charged with whole city and sometimes we only look at downtown, wants a comprehensive conversation there is so much potential here, she doesn’t even understand the huge transformation in their area that is proposed.
And with that, I had to go, it was a rational note to end on . . . I don’t know what they decided, I should have followed up yesterday, but didn’t have time at work.
