Carolyn Fath Ashby
SSM Health has proposed buying the Pick ‘n Save lot on Park Street, where it would build a new clinic. To prevent the area from becoming a food desert, city officials are trying to attract a new grocery 300 feet away.
Dominic Ledesma was one of the first neighborhood residents to speak to the proposal by SMM Health to build a new five-story clinic on Park Street.
“I have two questions for everyone. First, please raise your hand if you access care from the Dean, SSM clinic that’s there currently,” said Ledesma at the April 5 meeting, referring to SSM’s clinic on Fish Hatchery Road. Less than half of those in the crowd raised their hands.
“Now, please raise your hand if you access the Pick ‘n Save grocery store in this neighborhood,” continued Ledesma. Almost everyone raised their hand. “No further questions, your honor.”
Ledesma’s questions speak to the anxiety that residents in south Madison have over SSM’s looming development, which they fear will leave them stranded in a food desert. The health care provider is proposing to buy the 2.3-acre lot at 1312 Park St., where the neighborhood Pick ‘n Save now stands, and replace it with a 176,000-square foot, five-story clinic. The $75-million project has been in the works since spring 2018 according to Melissa Huggins, principal planner at Urban Assets and SSM Health’s consultant on the project.
In January 2018, the city had already designated the neighborhood as an area where food access could be improved. When Pick ‘n Save closes, the nearest general-interest, non-ethnic grocery store — Trader Joe’s on Monroe Street — would be 1.6 miles away from the neighborhood. That’s 1.1 miles farther than what would classify an urban area as a food desert by USDA standards.
The city’s interest in developing a grocery store at the former Truman Olson U.S. Army Reserve Center site, city-owned land about 300 feet from the Pick ‘n Save, could resolve the issue. However, those plans have stalled.
Many residents fear they could be without a grocery story for months or years once SSM Health starts building.
Gloria Kirchoff has been a client of SSM Health Dean Medical Group her whole life — as have her children and grandchildren.
She remembers when the group announced a few years ago it was contemplating leaving the south side and was relieved they decided to stay. Her mother currently travels to one of their clinics by foot weekly, so having health care within walkable distance is important, Kirchoff said.
But access to healthy food within walkable distance is just as important, Kirchoff says. She worries that the neighborhood could experience something similar to Allied Drive, where a Cub Foods closed in 2009. The neighborhood went without a grocery store until Luna’s Groceries opened last December.
“Whatever goes on in south Madison needs to include us because we live here and we’re the people who use it. I don’t want to be a desert,” she says. “I know the experience that Allied had.… I’m feeling like we’re next.”
Ald. Sheri Carter, who represents an area south of the Pick ‘n Save, says that Madison officials are working to prevent what happened in the Allied Drive neighborhood from happening on Park Street. When Cub Foods closed, the city didn’t have a plan for finding a new grocery.
But the city controls the Truman Olson site. When it issued a request for proposals last year, it stressed a goal “to ensure that a grocery store remains in the area to serve the neighborhood.”
Welton Enterprises responded to the RFP in April 2018 and revised its proposal in February and again in March. Its most recent proposal, estimated to cost $18 million, calls for a 30,000-square foot grocery store, 52 housing units — a blend of affordable and market rate — and 160 parking spaces, most of which would be surface parking.
The Truman Olson selection committee reviewing proposals rejected Welton’s plan based on recommendations from city staff, which found the company’s request for more than $3 million in city financial assistance was too high and because it didn’t meet a design requirement calling for a high-density, mixed-use project that is at least two stories.
“It’s [within] an urban design district that states that buildings have to be two-story, not one-story. So we’re trying to adhere to that,” Carter says. “Once you lower the standards, then you’re lowering it for anything else that comes along. The grocery store does not have to be on two floors, there are grocery stores already in Madison that have all their offices on the second floor, which actually frees up room on the first floor for groceries.”
On April 3, the selection committee decided to issue a new RFP, which will need to be approved by the Common Council, says Heather Stouder, the city’s planning director. Once the RFP is posted, developers would have 90 days to submit proposals.
Stouder says city officials are narrowing the focus of the RFP to “require that the proposal include a grocery store, but not necessarily anything else at this time.” She says “that may widen the number of developers who would be able to submit.”
As for the SSM Health clinic, Stouder says that the company has not yet submitted formal plans to the city. Ald. Tag Evers, who represents the area, says that it’s not even certain that clinic will go through or that the Pick ‘n Save will close. “It’s conceivable that SSM could choose to build their clinic elsewhere,” he says.
Evers’ main concern is that if the Pick ‘n Save does end up closing, that another grocery store opens quickly, leaving no or little “gap” without one. “But there are a lot of moving parts and maybe that’s unavoidable,” he says. “But the goal then would be to shorten the gap, minimize it.”
The area is part of the city’s Wingra B.U.I.L.D. redevelopment plan, which looks at increasing density and employment opportunities between Park Street, Fish Hatchery Road and Wingra Creek. Consultant Huggins said at the April 5 meeting that SSM Health hopes to help fuel the revival.
“The city has sort of always looked at SSM and said ‘once you guys do something, that’s really going to get this triangle going,’” Huggins said. “And quite frankly, this is the perfect location for a clinic to serve the south side and to start the investment continuing to flow into Park Street.”
However, Carter says that SSM Health’s proposed clinic doesn’t connect to the neighborhood the way that officials had hoped. “The Park Street side does not have a lot of engagement,” Carter says. But she notes that both the new clinic and grocery store could provide jobs within walkable distance for local residents — which does keep with the Wingra B.U.I.L.D. plan’s vision.
Development in the area is picking up, with apartment buildings recently built or in the works, including The Dude apartments, The Ideal apartments and Peloton Place.
But some people fear new development will displace longtime residents. Born and raised in Madison, Pia Kinney-James has witnessed how the city’s urban development plans in recent decades negatively affected individuals and families. She is concerned that what’s happening on Park Street would mirror what happened in the Greenbush/Triangle neighborhood closer to downtown.
“In 1962, the city relocated — that’s what they called it — Greenbush to build the Triangle. And now we’re talking about another triangle. Is this the same thing?” Kinney-James said at the meeting. “We got pushed out to the Madison south side, which was considered sub-property. There were farms out here — no store, no whatever. Now it’s prime property?”
Carter understands residents’ fears, noting that south Madison is one of the few places in the city that remains affordable. That’s one reason she’s hoping the next round of proposals will offer affordable housing.
“We don’t have many of these neighborhoods left,” she says. “And so I’m very protective of making sure that these neighborhoods don’t disappear, don’t get gentrified and the residents don’t have to be displaced.”
