Eric Murphy
A sign in front of the construction at the Brayton lot.
The Brayton lot, formerly used for surface parking, is now staging construction equipment and vehicles for the city's Bus Rapid Transit project.
For decades, people driving to downtown Madison to visit a state office building or to stroll through the Saturday market around the Capitol Square could find parking in the sprawling Brayton Lot, bordered by East Washington Avenue and Butler, East Main and Hancock streets. But after years of planning the city is finally moving forward with plans to redevelop the site, and any parking included on the lot would have to serve only the site itself, not the general public.
“It’s not to come down to the farmers’ market,” community development project manager Dan Rolfs said at a public meeting Tuesday night on the lot's redevelopment.
Plans from the last three decades call for the construction of several new buildings, including a large office tower or housing that could be up to 10 to 12 stories tall, townhomes on Main Street where height would be limited to four stories, and space for community services and retail. “It’s the last remaining full block undeveloped site in downtown, so it’s a huge opportunity,” Rebecca Cnare, a city urban design planner, said at the public meeting. “Planning has been happening for this block since 1995 at least.”
In 2011, Madison bought the portion of the two-acre site once owned by the state. “Because the city owns it, we have a lot of control over what goes in,” principal planner Bill Fruhling tells Isthmus. “We’re not in that situation too often.”
At the meeting, a few dozen residents used remote clickers to vote on top priorities, which included affordable and market rate housing, the design of the buildings, and sustainability. For the part of the site devoted to housing, attendees split about evenly between wanting to see rental and owner-occupied units, and between affordable and market-rate units. Most favored two- or three-bedroom units over studios and one-bedrooms.
For Matt Gawlik, a homeowner in the First Settlement neighborhood, sustainability and parking are his top issues. Gawlik wants to see fewer parking spots than the 350 suggested in a concept shown by staff that included one level of underground parking and two levels above. “Each one of those parking spots is just encouraging people to drive rather than using the Bus Rapid Transit that’s right there,” says Gawlik. Next year, a BRT station will open nearby at Blair Street. “Madison has set ambitious climate goals. To meet them we need to reduce the number of vehicle miles driven.”
While the city will be able to incorporate feedback from residents like Gawlik throughout the redevelopment, the Federal Transit Administration will also have a say in the project. Under a funding agreement for the city’s Bus Rapid Transit system with the federal government, the Brayton Lot has been operating as a construction staging area for the project. When the BRT finishes construction in 2024, the FTA requires the Brayton Lot to be redeveloped in a way that supports the city’s transit system, city staff told attendees.
In FTA agreements elsewhere, that could mean constructing a transit center or other transit infrastructure on the site. But Madison will instead demonstrate that the Brayton Lot’s redevelopment will benefit transit by increasing the number of people who use transit in the area and spurring private investment. The FTA, which has approval over project details, also prohibits excess parking on the site and requires that the city share some of the proceeds of any lease or sale with Madison Metro.
West-side resident Josh Olson is optimistic about the possibility of a dense, central development near a BRT stop. Olson, who used to live downtown, says he has been keeping an eye on a possible move to the East Washington corridor once the BRT is complete, which could allow him and his partner to get rid of a car and take transit more often instead. “I’m kind of happy there are projects like this emphasizing that you don’t need two cars to live in Madison,” says Olson. “There are other options besides that.”
Staff will use feedback from Tuesday’s meeting and another meeting today to craft a request for proposals that the city council needs to approve before it is issued. Staff estimates that the project would take four to six years to complete, with opportunities for feedback along the way. Said Cnare: “There’s public engagement baked in through that whole process.”
