CDA 'brainstorming': Mr. Spock could help
The Community Development Authority's 'Brainstorming Session for Improving Downtown Middleton' on Thursday, August 13, was long on good intentions and short on concrete proposals.
The CDA's mission is to help with business development and affordable housing in the downtown area. For legal reasons, and the way it was originally, and partially still is, funded, it cannot operate outside TIF district 3. It also can only provide financial assistance to non-profit organizations, not businesses directly. It can thus support the Downtown Middleton Business Association (DMBA), but not individual members. Because of its statutory limitations, extending its range to help businesses in other parts of the city, as district 3 alderwoman Katy Nelson inquired, is difficult.
It traditionally pays for snow removal in downtown public areas, as well as the maintenance of planters and other public landscaping features. It also gives subsidies to events like National Mustard Day, the Strolling Jazz Festival and the tree lighting at City Hall.
The CDA's main contribution to helping downtown businesses through the pandemic, besides having picnic tables set up at the plaza and the green space next to City Hall, so far has been putting up yard signs for a 'Pick Your Picnic' campaign.
District 1 alderwoman Kathy Olson supported a suggestion originally made by district 7 alderman Dan Ramsey (published in Middleton e-View 8):
‘If local businesses are favorable, the L&O [License & Ordinance] committee could consider a possible 'revolving permit' for Stone Horse Green - whereby a restaurant could sponsor and/or cater a specific picnic day in the plaza. This would extend to establishments not located downtown an opportunity to utilize the city green. It is even possible for a non-food retailer to partner with a local eatery in sponsorship and catering.’
The picnic tables have proven popular, but the CDA is reluctant to create events that would attract too many people: Balancing the need of local businesses for customers and the need of limiting the spread of coronavirus requires a delicate touch.
Although, as the City's director of Planning and Community Development Abby Attoun acknowledged, the plaza is currently being used as originally intended, the City is also slightly overwhelmed by its success as the space is experiencing some "growing pains". Among the challenges have been insufficient trash pick-up (a private contractor, Coverall, is supposed to pick up trash on weekends, although that might not be enough even if it is done on schedule, which it isn't always), and the lack of electrical power. With plans in place to install lighting at the plaza, power will be restored soon.
The latter is part of an effort to extend the outdoor season beyond the warm and long-sunlight-hours days of summer. This is crucial for many bars and restaurants that will face a very uncertain future if the indoor-dining business does not or cannot pick up.
In order to encourage outdoor dining, the City administration has quietly allowed bars and restaurants to extend their outdoor seating on public property as far as they can and want, in effect suspending the limits usually set by the sidewalk cafe permits. Establishments that have outdoor seating on private property are not affected by this, since they don't need a City permit in the first place.
The CDA also discussed ways to have heat sources of one sort or another at the plaza for colder days and evenings, although maintenance and supervision could pose problems. But nothing would presumably prevent individual restaurants and bars from putting up propane or similar heaters in their outdoor areas.
Brought up again was the idea to close the western leg of Hubbard Avenue, between Parmenter Street and Elmwood Avenue, to car traffic, so that outdoor seating could be expanded with increased physical distancing, and a more relaxed and enjoyable shopping experience could be provided. Retailers would also be able to have outdoor displays that way.
Pedestrian zones like that are of course not new, and they have invariably been successful wherever they have been established. A majority of CDA members have expressed their support for at least doing it on a trial basis, and City staff is also in favor, but the Board of the DMBA is apparently opposed to it. Nobody on the CDA seems to know why, although rumor has it that it is largely Longtable Cafe that is the obstacle. Other establishments, like the Village Green for instance, have come out in favor.
It is this newsletter's opinion that the street should be closed. In fact, it is this newsletter's opinion that this and other downtown streets should be closed permanently, but that is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
Still, it would be a good idea to close the western end of Hubbard Avenue, even if only Fridays through Sundays for a few weeks. It would allow everybody - businesses, the City, residents - to test the concept of a pedestrian shopping street, and to draw conclusions, positive and negative, based on real-life experience and data, rather than having inaction based on prejudice. Middleton has an opportunity here to do a full-scale field test; we should not let it go to waste. As the great intergalactic philosopher Mr. Spock famously said: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
The CDA is planning to hold a joint meeting soon with the DMBA to discuss the matter.
City Council: Help for local businesses, finally?
And, talking about helping local businesses: This newsletter and its print companion, the Middleton Review, have for many weeks now criticized the Middleton Common Council's lack of initiative in addressing the plight of local businesses struggling because of coronavirus. Well, it looks like the Council, or at least some of its members, might have heard the message.
At the initiative of district 5 alderman Luke Fuszard, the Council will discuss, this coming Tuesday, August 18, the 'Consideration of City Support for Local Businesses Suffering from the Effects of the Pandemic'. The accompanying comments by City staff provide some background and insight on the agenda item:
'There has been much discussion of the role of local government in assisting local businesses with loans during the pandemic. However, unlike Dane County and the State of Wisconsin, the City of Middleton does not have federal funds eligible for this purpose, and it's highly debatable whether local loan funds will provide much help. Both Sun Prairie (one loan) and Fitchburg (two loans) have loan programs, but they haven't been highly used at this time. Grants from the federal government through the State and County have helped to prop up many businesses to date. Verona has provided a cash grant program that is easier to administer, and they have had much more activity from that program than have the other local loan programs. Included in the Council packet is a draft of a program that might be considered for low-interest loans with generous terms. We may not receive broad interest in such a program. However, given the stalemate currently in Washington, such a program might provide a viable alternative for some local businesses as the pain of the pandemic continues to grow. Since we have limited internal staff resources for such a program, potential partners for administering such loans include Middleton Area Development Corporation (MADC), Madison Development Corporation (MDC), the Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation (WWBIC) or a local bank. Nonetheless, if the Council is interested in having a broader beneficial impact on the local business community, cash grants might also be considered. Either way, the Council would need to identify a source of funding. Tax Increment [District] #3 is the natural choice, and it could also lend or donate funds to TID #5, but that would leave out a funding source for businesses outside of the two TIDs.'
Clarification
In Middleton e-View 11 (August 12), I wrote about the downtown plaza that a 'professional fundraising consultant was hired, and the Middleton Area Development Corporation (MADC) took the lead in the fundraising effort'. That was a misleading simplification. While it is true that a consultant (Amanda White) was hired, MADC, although involved in the fundraising, did not as such take the lead. The City's director of Planning and Community Development Abby Attoun explained it better in an e-mail: 'MADC is the fiscal agent and holds the contract with the fundraiser, Amanda White. This allows confidentiality for the donors. There was a separate committee formed, the Capital Campaign Committee, which is doing the work to meet with prospective donors. The only overlap between MADC and the CCC is that Kevin Mahaney leads both.'
Sorry about the confusion.
Middleton capital projects (II): Century Avenue bike trail
Among the 2021 projects that the Plan Commission approved on August 11 (for recommendation to the Finance Committee and the Common Council) is the North Mendota Trail Connector.
It will provide a much-needed safe, off-street trail for about 5,000 residents living in the northeastern part of Middleton who want to walk or bike to the shops, jobs and other amenities in the rest of the city. Their only connections currently are Pheasant Branch Conservancy, whose unpaved trails are unusable for at least half the year, and Century Avenue, either in the street, which is dangerous, or on the narrow sidewalk, which is unsuitable.
The trail is to be built in two segments along the north side of Century Avenue: a first segment that will run from Branch Street to the traffic lights at Highland Way, and a second segment that will continue east, and eventually connect to a county trail network along Highway M in the town of Westport (see map; for the western segment, the alternate route is going to be built - dashed red line).
The first (western) segment of the commuter trail is scheduled for construction next year. Planning and design have been complicated because of utilities infrastructure that needs to be moved, a number of natural obstacles that need to be bridged, and, last but not least, necessary negotiations with adjacent property owners for easements or other arrangements.
It would of course have been a lot easier, faster and cheaper to simply take the space required for the trail out of Century Avenue, but even the bare suggestion of that possibility is akin to blasphemy in Middleton, where the holy automobile is still being worshipped as a local patron saint (as the resistance, described above, to closing the western leg of Hubbard Avenue to make it a pedestrian zone also shows).
And since the other option, namely paving the trails in Pheasant Branch Conservancy, is politically out of the question (the guardians of that realm, the Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy, are an omnipresent éminence grise in the local corridors of power), the only realistic, albeit expensive, possibility is the one being currently pursued.
The western segment's cost is currently estimated at $860,000, although, as the thinking goes in some circles, it won't cost anything because the money will come out of TIF district 3 (actually TID 5, but TID 5 still has no money of its own to spend; it all comes from TID 3).
The TID financing is one reason why district 8 alderman and Finance Committee chairman Mark Sullivan consistently votes against every aspect of the trail, even though his constituents will be among its main beneficiaries. The other Council member whose constituents will benefit significantly, district 7 alderman and Council president Dan Ramsey, has, on the other hand, been the trail's main champion throughout the whole process, not least by helping facilitate negotiations with property owners.
The second segment, now scheduled for construction in 2022, is expected to cost $1.35 million (engineer's estimate, which could be way off). Since that part of the trail cannot be financed through TIF (it is too far away from a current TIF district to qualify), the money would have to come from capital borrowing. Considering the City's financial outlook for the next few years however, that seems unrealistically optimistic.