Thomas DeVillers
Palisade Properties would raze three houses and move four others for an apartment project on East Johnson Street. The iconic Caribou Tavern would remain.
Patty Prime, president of the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association, fears a real life version of the game Monopoly might be playing out in her neighborhood.
Palisade Properties wants to remake almost all of the 700 block of East Johnson Street by razing three houses and moving four others in order to construct two large new buildings with 56 apartments and ground story retail. The block is probably best known as the home of The Caribou Tavern and Self Serve Laundry, although those businesses would remain.
Prime is concerned that this Monopoly model — with developers accumulating several parcels in order to exchange green plastic houses for larger red “hotels” (in this case apartment buildings) — might become a prototype in Madison’s traditional neighborhoods.
“Having a big stretch of houses that get purchased is an opportunity for a developer to completely remake a block,” observes Prime. “And that has an impact on the character of our neighborhood: how it works, how it feels.
“We don’t want to keep providing an opportunity for people to take out existing housing for profit and change the character of the neighborhood,” she adds.
There’s precedent for this. On the 600 block of East Johnson, Stone House Development constructed City Row Apartments in 2009 after demolishing 11 older homes.
Ald. Ledell Zellers, who represents the neighborhood, also worries about the Monopoly model becoming more common, saying there’s a potential for “destructiveness when developers accumulate properties for the purpose of demolition.”
If this is rewarded, Zellers says, it will create “an incentive to allow properties to deteriorate to help with getting an approval to demolish.”
Since initial discussion in November, Palisade’s proposal has gone through several drafts. It originally called for demolishing eight homes, renovating two others and moving a third to make way for three four-story buildings.
The Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association has been working with Palisade, which is owned by brothers Jeff and Chris Houden, in hopes of crafting a project amenable to everyone.
“This process has resulted in a proposal that is much improved from its initial iteration,” says Patrick Heck, chair of the association’s steering committee.
But Heck says the neighborhood remains unsatisfied with the design. “The committee majority still feels that further changes are warranted, particularly related to the scale and mass of the new buildings,” says Heck. It’s also concerned about “the lack of bona fide affordable housing in the new buildings.”
The project — which affects 11 properties on the block, from 717 through 751-753 East Johnson St. — significantly departs from the city-adopted Tenney-Lapham neighborhood plan. It would require the property to be rezoned. (An unrelated housing project is already under way next door to the Caribou.)
The neighborhood association surveyed most of the existing structures and found only one is so far gone as to merit demolition. All the affected Palisade homes date from the turn of the last century, except for two from 1874, 18 years after Madison became a city.
Palisade’s sole comment to Isthmus comes by email from spokesperson Pat McCabe: “We are pleased to propose a project that will preserve the existing housing stock, provide new and more sustainable housing options, and contribute to a pedestrian friendly commercial district. Currently, we are working through the [neighborhood] steering committee process while also discussing the proposal with city staff.”
Amy Scanlon, Madison’s preservation planner, says “There has been no formal land use application and [the city’s planning unit] is still reviewing the concepts to determine if they are consistent with adopted plans.”
Preservationists dislike moving buildings, as it removes these structures from their context. The city’s Landmarks Commission has reviewed the houses affected by Palisade’s proposal, “and determined that they had historic value related to the [neighborhood] collection of period buildings, but that none of them were of landmark quality,” says Scanlon.
Palisade meanwhile is using an unconventional means of lobbying for the project. On Sept. 11 it emailed UW-Madison students, asking them to support the project by signing an online petition. Restoration and “relocating” were mentioned, but not demolition.
It’s unknown whether Palisade emailed the entire 43,000 UW student body, or just those in the neighborhood.
“I don’t understand this survey at all. It seems like some kind of Hail Mary pass or something,” says Prime. “[The survey] seems distinctly geared to go around the process of engaging the neighborhood and the city.”
The Tenney-Lapham neighborhood is framed by North Blair Street, Lake Mendota, the Yahara River and East Washington Avenue. It’s adjacent to the historic Mansion Hill neighborhood and a block from the Third Lake Ridge historic district.
The neighborhood is experiencing a development boom, but most of the growth has been on its southern edge along East Washington Avenue, where several high-rises have gone up on vacant or underused commercial property.
“Since 2013, [the association] has supported all of the new housing which has been built or which is now being built,” says Zellers. The neighborhood has seen the addition of nearly 1,000 housing units — an increase of 50 percent.
“That’s huge,” says Zellers. “What other neighborhood in the city has ever had this kind of increase? And the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association has supported all of these new developments.”
But now the neighborhood is being asked to accommodate redevelopment in its sleepier, porch-lined interior.
The neighborhood endured a sharp debate over the City Row project in 2009. At the time, residents sounded the alarm that traditional neighborhoods would give way to large apartment buildings — a trend they now worry is materializing with Palisade’s project.
“We’ve resisted it at the planning commission many times, and said, ‘We don’t want that to be a precedent,’” says Prime.
“But now obviously it is. It’s there,” she adds. “City Row has been cited by developer after developer, and Chris Houden especially said he loves how that looks on the street, and he wanted to create something similar on the 700 block of Johnson.”
