Sasaki
Plans to redevelop the Lake Monona shoreline include a park over John Nolen Drive.
Think Millennial Park and the Riverwalk in Chicago. That’s how Allen Arntsen, a board member of Madison LakeWay Partners, wants people to imagine the redevelopment potential of the Lake Monona shoreline in downtown Madison.
“This shoreline is one of Madison’s great assets and we are really here to make that available to people who live in and visit Madison,” says Arntsen. John Nolen Drive, the railroad tracks and the city’s topography currently make accessing Lake Monona from downtown difficult, he points out. “People can’t enjoy the lake.”
The roots of Madison LakeWay Partners date to the 2008 recession when a group of Madison design professionals, with some unexpected time on their hands, started to look for public projects they could contribute their expertise to, says Arntsen. They eventually focused their attention on the Lake Monona shoreline, asking whether the city could connect downtown to Lake Monona and build a park along the lake.
The group came up with some alternate designs and Downtown Madison Inc., where Arntsen was board chair at the time, helped push the waterfront park project forward as an important civic project. In 2012, it was included in the city’s downtown plan.
With a grant from the Madison Community Foundation, the group hired an engineering firm to do a feasibility study on the project, and in 2018, incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The mission of the group, which recently changed its name from Friends of Nolen Waterfront to Madison LakeWay Partners, is to partner with the city on the lakeshore redevelopment project, raising funds and serving as a project advocate. Pending a governance agreement, it is also expected that the group would help manage programming for the park. The group currently has an annual budget of $200,000.
The group helped fund a design challenge seeking master plans for the 1.7 miles of shoreline and 17 acres of public lakefront along Lake Monona. Sasaki, an international design firm with a focus on waterfront projects, was ultimately selected by the Lake Monona Waterfront Ad-hoc Committee in 2023 and the city adopted the Madison LakeWay Master Plan in 2024. Sasaki’s master plan includes a park over John Nolen Drive from East Wilson Street, featuring an amphitheater and concessions and restroom facilities; construction of separate pedestrian, cycling and running paths on the section of the John Nolen causeway between North Shore Drive and Lakeside Street; and a dock and overlook near Olin Park affording a view of Madison’s skyline.
The first phase of the project — construction of the causeway paths — would be done in conjunction with the reconstruction of John Nolen Drive, expected to run from 2025-2027. The shoreline work would follow, says Mike Sturm, landscape architect with the city of Madison Parks Division and the project manager.
Madison LakeWay Partners recently went through a strategic planning process and has hired its first staffer, executive director Jayme Powers, a former executive producer and chief operating officer for the 2018 Special Olympics. The group is also putting together a fundraising plan that will include a capital campaign to raise funds for the first phase of the project.
The city has budgeted about $6 million for the project’s first phase, and Dane County just approved $2 million for the project as well. Sturm says the projected cost of the first phase won’t be known until schematic designs for the causeway corridor are completed over the next few months.
Madison LakeWay Partners and the city are working together now to apply for a $20 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to support implementation of the lakeshore master plan.
“Madison is identified by its lakes — they are a unique feature of Madison,” says Arntsen, adding that the Lake Monona shoreline, the most central of any in the city, is one of Madison’s “greatest assets.”
“Everybody knows about the mental health benefits of nature and access to water,” he says. “This should just be a jewel of Madison. It should be one of the top destinations for visitors. It should be a special place. And that’s what we’re working on.”
This article is part of The Nonprofit Issue, the special November 2024 print edition of Isthmus. See the other stories here.
