2003 Madison Mayors’ Race:
The Role of Historic Preservation
Jim Schwall
1 · Higher density can be achieved without obliterating Madison’s history. Current city leaders are either wearing blinders, or are too closely linked to the kind of developers that can’t figure out how to make enough money without tearing down and reconstructing entire blocks. Removing still-useful buildings causes several of the problems we have now -- lack of low-income housing, lack of studio/performance space for artists, growing lack of diversity in downtown neighborhoods, lack of affordable spaces to start new businesses, and sharply rising taxes for the smaller owner-operated businesses that do immeasurable good for the city. To lose the picturesque and the historical on State, Williamson, Johnson or Monroe Streets is to lose these neighborhoods as attractions.
2 · We can change the tax structure, of course, and we must if we want to preserve these buildings. As all the new already-approved tower apartments for students are completed, the houses in the part of the Bassett area currently referred to as a student ghetto could be reconfigured piecemeal as owner-occupancies, and I think they would be sold and rehabbed in a heartbeat. Rehabbing actually seems to produce more jobs over a longer period of time than wholesale redevelopment, and the jobs and businesses will be nearly all local. We also need to change zoning laws to allow expansion as young families grow, including "mother-in-law apartments" and work spaces in out-buildings, above garages, etc.
3 · Most of the really unattractive spaces are rental units owned by absentee landlords, or landlords so bad they might as well be absentee. I’d advocate cracking down so hard that these buildings can no longer be considered cash cows which landlords could ignore as long as the checks keep coming. If tenant rents are paid into escrow due to accumulated fines these owners would either have to act in good faith or sell the properties, and theywould sell -- these are, or could be, more attractive neighborhoods than Spaight Street and the Monroe area in many ways.
4 · Sure — use the room tax, which is now 100 percent wasted propping up the money pit known as the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.
5 · First of all, the city should
not have been encouraging this direction in the first place by using TIF funding
and condemnation to start the destruction of State Street. It might already be
too late to save State Street, but if this block goes, I think it’s all over within
ten years. If the businesses down there were encouraged with tax rebates for owner-operators,
for being unique-to-Madison, and for having owners who live in Madison, it might
be possible to head it off.
The multi-million State Street beautification
plan should be scrapped and the money used for these kinds of encouragement instead.
We’d save the look and feel of the street, the apartments and store-fronts, and
the attractiveness to tourists of what has to be our number-one draw to out-of-towners.
Otherwise, Disney takes over, the street musicians get arrested, it feels totally
faux, out-of-neighborhood shoppers disappear, and the stores will all be chains
sending all their profits to Omaha or Atlanta, at least until they close down
for lack of business and the street becomes as dead as many other cities’ downtown
areas.
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