UP: Hotels in Madison. On the heels of plans for a $107 million expansion of the Edgewater comes news that Apex Enterprises is eyeing a 300-room, $100 million hotel linked to Monona Terrace. That's besides a 151-room Hyatt going up on West Washington Avenue and talk of expanding the Hilton and building new hotels near the Overture Center and at Park and Fish Hatchery. How many hotel rooms are too many? Madison may have a chance to find out.
DOWN: UW System. Even after the state Election Board's disastrous experience with Accenture, the university system is paying outside consultants huge sums under an open-ended contract on an IT project. An Associated Press review found that 14 employees of the Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group charged at least $100,000 each over a five-month period, at rates as high as $342 an hour. Heck, you could probably get UW System President Kevin Reilly to do it for that.
