Richard Hurd
James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin 05-03-2014 110
Located a few blocks from the Capitol, James Madison Park is one of the few places where residents can connect with Lake Mendota.
Joe Lusson believes that James Madison Park, a few blocks from the Capitol, is a special place — one of the few where people can access Madison’s lakes downtown.
But he worries that a proposed master plan to redesign the park will change it for the worse. The proposal calls for, among other things, moving parking from behind the Gates of Heaven building into a narrow strip that runs alongside Gorham Street. It also proposes putting a new shelter and cafe in the middle of the park, and relocating basketball courts nearby, breaking up the current expanse of green space.
Lusson, who lives nearby, is concerned that the parking lot would diminish what makes the park special, by destroying the current unobstructed view of Lake Mendota and creating safety hazards for people who are walking to the park.
“From where I live, I’m not going to see the parking lot, so I don’t care,” Lusson says. “But I believe in the value of the park to the whole city and especially to the downtown. It’s a gem, it’s an asset.”
Lusson and other residents are pushing for an alternative design that would keep the parking and a new park shelter at the west end of the park.
City officials have been noncommittal about the proposal and say if agreement can’t be reached soon, the park’s master plan will be put on hold.
Dawn O’Kroley, an architect who served for 10 years on Madison’s Urban Design Commission, says that in drafting a master plan for the park, the design team has a responsibility to follow guidelines from both the city’s Comprehensive Plan and the Park and Open Space Plan, both of which were revised in 2018.
O’Kroley says the plans emphasize the importance of preserving views of the lake and the downtown skyline as well as more intimate views of nature.
The Comprehensive Plan states: “All of these views are important. Once they are lost they are impossible to recover.”
O’Kroley estimates that the draft plan reduces the uninterrupted expanse of green space in the park to 69 percent, although she notes that “Parks has not provided complete data on how much of the park is going to be paved.”
“The park was created through the process of removing homes to create a public green space on the lake,” she says. “This is a prized urban green space. It impacts our health by having access to green space. It should be treasured and that should be the first point of conversation, to preserve the green space, to improve our water quality.”
Eric Knepp, the city’s park superintendent, says that since the master plan is a guide — and not a detailed design — calculating the exact amount of green space is impossible. Moreover, he says measuring green space is tricky, because what counts as green is subjective.
“What about a green roof on a building? Is that green or not? I would say no,” he says. “What about a sand volleyball court? Is that green space or is it sand?”
He acknowledges that the proposed plan would increase paved areas. However, some of that pavement comes from the accessible paved paths that go through the park. The number of parking spaces would stay roughly the same, he says. “Not all green space is created equal,” he says. “Not all paved space is created equal.”
Some residents believe that the parking is being moved to address concerns by police, noting that the Parks Division has cited “more than 700 police calls” to the park in 2017. But an investigation by John Jacobs, a near west-side resident, found that most of the police attention was routine and minor, including logs for “check property” and “foot patrol.”
“The high crime image that city officials apparently want to portray with ‘over 700 police calls’ is more than a little exaggeration,” Jacobs wrote to city officials. “It’s deceptive fear-mongering on a grand scale.”
Knepp denies that police concerns are driving the plan. “Police call data is not a primary factor in determining how and where to locate amenities,” he says. “Where possible, we incorporate crime prevention through environmental design principles in all park designs.”
The main motivation, Knepp says, was to more logically lay out the park by activity. Moving parking closer to Gorham Street, he says, also reduces stormwater runoff into the lake. “I think that amount of pavement [near the lake] is worse than a little bit more pavement farther away from the lake with appropriate stormwater management. Reasonable people can disagree on that.”
Lusson definitely disagrees. For him, the real stormwater concern is “water running off the Capitol Square and into the sewers,” an issue that can’t be solved through the park redesign.
However, in moving the parking alongside Gorham Street, the city would lose some trees and create a “dead” green space between the parking lot and the road where “nobody is going to want to set up a picnic blanket.”
He also argues that it would be a safety hazard.
“So much of the park is heavily used by the residents of downtown who don’t have another park, so it’s the people in the high rises or the students and they’re entering on foot. They can enter anywhere now,” he says. “But with this road and parking lot, you’re navigating in-between cars with a toddler or a cooler.”
O’Kroley and other residents have proposed an alternative plan — build a new park shelter on the west end of the park and keep the parking next to it.
“The west end shelter meets the… goals to preserve views and protect green space,” O’Kroley says. “It provides shelter by being nestled in the base of Mansion Hill. Technically it offers ability to have efficient parking that serves both shelters and allows Gates of Heaven to have access to accessible bathrooms.”
Knepp says his staff is looking at the concept, but sees major problems with it, including that it will be cost prohibitive.
The Board of Park Commissioners is slated to take up the plan again at its Feb. 13 meeting. Knepp hopes that the board votes on the plan by March.
However, that wouldn’t be the end of the process. Funding won’t be available to start the more detailed planning until 2020. But, having the plan in place would allow his staff to have some certainty for management, like knowing where it should plant trees.
But Knepp says it’s okay if opposition delays the plan.
“It’s either acted on by March or it’s on the back burner and we come back to it in the future,” he says. “We’d continue to operate James Madison Park as we do. It’s a really great park, that’s why there’s so much passion about it.”
