Tommy Washbush
The empty lot at 114 E. Wilson St.
The empty lot at 114 E. Wilson St., looking toward the Great Dane brewery.
The gravel-filled, fenced-in lot at 114 E. Wilson St. has both old and new neighbors. On one side is the Great Dane Pub and Brewery, with the faded sign of the long-departed Fess Hotel still visible. On the other is the new Embassy Suites hotel. The lot’s final fate is yet to be decided, and its use in the short term has set rumors flying: Will it someday be home to an apartment building, a parking lot, a green space, or even the next city hall? The property’s future depends on who you talk to.
Until recently, the lot’s been used to help fill in other pieces of the jigsaw that is the Judge Doyle Square project— a massive, long-running set of redevelopments kicked off in 2017 to replace an aging parking ramp, breathe new life into downtown real estate, and add hotel space for visitors to the Monona Terrace convention center. The lot was a staging ground for construction on the Embassy Suites hotel, which opened in 2024, and for the ONE09 development across the street, which opened in 2025.
“The drama and story of Judge Doyle Square is not over yet,” says Matt Wachter, the city’s director of planning and community and economic development who has worked on the project since 2017. “There is a third phase that will need to be done.”
The city’s parking division, which owned the parking ramp on East Wilson that was demolished, still owns the lot. Thanks to a lapsed development agreement, the city also owns the rights to develop it.
This spring, the lot’s been getting work to make it a blank slate, as typical with construction staging areas, under a $167,000 public works contract approved by the city council in December 2025. That work includes regrading the gravel site to facilitate water drainage and a decorative gate. The agreement also calls for the addition of topsoil and grass by May 15, but that work appears to have stalled.
“The city recently completed work to manage runoff on this site and prevent flooding. We expect the site to be used for construction staging for the rest of the year,” writes Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, in a May 19 email.
“After that, we’ll be considering our options, including the possibility of additional residential development, as initially envisioned in the Judge Doyle Square plan. Of course, that would be a long process and include engagement with stakeholders and the Council,” she adds.
A design prepared this year by Potter Lawson for Quad Capital Partners, developers of the ONE09 project, envisions the vacant lot’s final use as an “urban oasis” connecting other downtown projects on the horizon, including the redevelopment of two state office buildings (the state is selling G.E.F. buildings 2 and 3, and bids are due in early June) and the city-owned Brayton Lot (the city is reviewing two different proposals for housing from different developers).
Chali Pittman
A 'for sale' sign in front of G.E.F. 3.
The state is selling off several office buildings nearby, including the G.E.F. buildings at 101 and 125 S. Webster St.
Under this vision, the vacant lot could be a “green spine” between those buildings and a redeveloped, “worldclass” waterfront along John Nolen, an expansion of Monona Terrace, an Amtrak Station, and a hotel at 1 W. Wilson St., another state-owned building being sold off. (Following approval from the State Building Commission in May, the Legislature’s budget committee on June 2 approved the sale of the building to a private developer for $10 million.)
“That area is going to change a lot, and there’s a lot we want to be intentional about, especially with the G.E.F. and the Brayton Lot parcels now coming to fruition,” says Rebecca Prochaska, Potter Lawson’s president and CEO.
In the near future, downtown Ald. Mike Verveer would like to see the lot seeded with grass. In the long term, affordable housing is the land’s “highest and best use,” he says, and the only use for the lot that the council has already approved. He says it’s a rare opportunity for the city to mandate truly affordable units, because the city owns the property and can set the price controls. But Verveer has a more immediate concern for the lot: making sure it doesn’t become a parking lot in the interim.
Multiple sources, including Wachter and Verveer, confirm that the idea of a temporary surface parking lot has circulated within city hall, driven in part by “curb management” — an initiative to assess the city’s use of curb space across the city and active congestion in this busy section of downtown, where loading trucks and delivery vehicles compete for space. Verveer says the idea has thrown a “monkey wrench” into what he thought was the settled plan of keeping the lot a fenced-off green space while the city mulls its long-term future.
“I think it’s unfortunate that [a parking lot] is still apparently under active consideration in city hall,” says Verveer, calling the idea “hypocritical” because private developers would not be allowed to do the same. He says that he’s spread the word to downtown residents, businesses, and stakeholders: “Universally, they think it’s an awful idea.”
Verveer’s also fighting a rumored long-term use: a new city hall. “I don’t think a new city hall is high up on any of our lists of how we should spend city resources,” Verveer says. When asked whether there’s a plan for that too, Wachter says that conversation comes “separately but at the same time” that the existing city hall is in flux.
A review of the City-County Building’s maintenance and repair needs is underway, and set to wrap up in September. The analysis comes as some county departments are moving out of the building. The county clerk is headed to Packers Avenue and two floors of the building will be vacated by the county when the new jail is finished. The city occupies roughly 40% of the building, and the county 60%, according to city finance director David Schmiedicke.
“There are a lot of big decisions that have to be made in the coming years on the future of the building,” says Verveer, adding that he “may be one of the few” who doesn’t mind remaining, even though it’s not his “favorite architecture.” He’s “open-minded” about the potential for new city government offices while cautioning that it’s not high on his priority list.
Wachter says the only uses for the lot at 114 E. Wilson St. that are “technically approved” without further city council sign-off are restoring the lot to its required condition under the public works contract, or building apartments included under the custom zoning approved for the Judge Doyle Square project years ago. Anything else, including a parking lot and new city headquarters, would require approval from city alders.
There’s another practical constraint to deciding what fills the lot: time and resources. Right now, Wachter says, city staff are focused on other projects. “There’s a work plan and a queue for running these huge public-private partnerships,” he says. “Even if the council said ‘go today’...that’s a multi-year process before someone starts construction.”
