By Justin Markofski
Northside Planning Council
There was strong resident turnout for the July 10 public meeting co-sponsored by District 12 Alder Amani Latimer Burris and the Sherman Neighborhood Association (SNA) with support from the Northside Planning Council (NPC).
More than 60 people were in the room to hear the most recent updates on the proposed redevelopment of the Roth Street Hartmeyer site, referred to as Huxley Yards. This meeting was a first chance for recently elected Alder Amani to convene district residents and interested Northsiders in cooperation with SNA and NPC to hear current project progress and to ask questions and express concerns and/or support for the pending new development.
There have been many community and city meetings and approvals over the past two years related to this project and readers can go to northsidenews.org for to read past articles with more project details.
At the July 10 community meeting, short project presentations were given by the developer, Lincoln Avenue Capitol, as well as from three key city staff from City of Madison planning, engineering and economic development divisions.
A full hour was purposefully built in for a robust question and answer period where more than half of the community members present asked questions and named the issues or concerns important to them. Topics of particular interest included the final materials management plan submitted July 7 to the DNR’s Bureau for Remediation and Redevelopment related to the site’s environmental history and testing as a brownfield redevelopment site. The full 107-page plan with appendices can be accessed here (it is the first link. Other past environmental reports related to this site are found here as well. See apps.dnr.wi.gov/botw/GetActivityDetail.do?detailSeqNo=580328.
Another point of specific interest was the City of Madison’s proposed plan to use $6,250,000 of TIF Financing to support the development of the 553 units of affordable housing as part of the creation of a new Tax Incremental District (TID 54 – Pennsylvania Avenue). This $6,250,000 represents the developments ‘gap financing needed’ to enable the affordability numbers to be met. The project is considered workforce housing and will be rented to residents at 60% average monthly income. The total project budget for this development is over $180,000,000..
The very next night, July 11, the Madison Common Council (MCC) unanimously voted to approve creation of TID 54 and use of TIF funds to support this affordable housing development as agenda items 83 and 84. The MCC spent one hour for questions and discussion before the vote of approval occurred just prior to midnight. Fellow Alders Sabrina Madison (District 17) and Jael Currie (District 16) were also in attendance at the community meeting and joined the unanimous approval of the TIF financing and TID creation. Through the dialogue that occurred it was restated that each approval that has been granted thus far continues to be contingent on all the remaining regulatory steps being satisfactorily fulfilled including the DNR’s final approval of the submitted Materials Management Plan. All remaining conditions must be met by each regulatory and oversight agency for this development.
City hydrogeologist Brynn Bemis pointed out that the City of Madison has many successful examples of similar brownfield redevelopments on post-industrial, contaminated sites. She provided many examples of housing developments and city parks on brownfields with worse conditions, including Royster Corners, Union Corners, the Garver Feed Mill, Demetral Park and McPike Park, to name a few. Nevertheless, a few concerned community members in the room remained emphatic that all due diligence must be observed step by step in considering placing human habitation on any potentially harmful site. Alder Amani concluded the night thanking everyone for their passion, presence and active engagement in this process.
The projected timeline is for construction to begin in fall 2023 with completion and move-ins occurring in the fall 2025.
Thanks to Door Creek Church North in the Northgate Shopping Center who made their space freely available for this community meeting at the request of the Sherman Neighborhood Association.