Residents critique proposals to rebuild downtown library

Kristin Czubkowski  —  1/09/2009 11:25 am

The importance of keeping a street-level presence for Madison's Central Library and locating it on a main city corridor gave one developer a slight edge in public opinion in the competition between two companies to rebuild the aging structure.

More than 50 people came to the city's Library Board meeting Thursday to hear from representatives of T. Wall Properties and the Fiore Cos., both of which are vying to rebuild the city's downtown library, 201 W. Mifflin St.

Though only a fraction of attendees spoke on the two plans, most seemed to favor the Fiore Cos.' plan, which would use an adjacent property already owned by the company on West Washington Avenue to create a six-story, stand-alone library that is part of an "integrated block" with other nearby buildings.

The plan put forth by T. Wall Properties, which was the impetus for restarting talks on rebuilding Central Library after a four-year hiatus, would use the current location on West Mifflin Street to create a nine-story, mixed-use development with the library located on three floors between first-floor retail and top-floor office space.

Though the T. Wall library would have a separate entrance for the library and the potential for first-floor space in the form of a library store, attendees who spoke out said the importance of the building's civic use should demand a strong street-level presence.

"Requiring the standard patron of the library to go to an upper floor for standard library usage is expensive, wasteful, inconvenient, discouraging and offensive," said resident Scott Herrick. "It reflects the prioritizations of the developer. It's an allocation or an appropriation of the high-rent space, which is now owned and controlled by the library on the first level, saying 'We'll take, we can get revenue from that, we'll take that revenue and allocate it to the developer, and then have the library patrons go up.'"

Many also spoke in favor of Fiore's plan to move the library to West Washington Avenue, a main thoroughfare to the State Capitol that would give the building additional prominence.

Developer Terrence Wall of T. Wall Properties made a case for a library within a mixed-use building, however, citing studies that showed libraries within other structures often see dramatic increases in visitors and circulation. Moreover, mixed-use has been heavily promoted in the city of Madison to developers, he said, and this would be an opportunity for the city to put those words into action.

"This is the message being sent to us as developers," he said.

What the city can afford, however, may be the final factor in which plan gets the green-light. The Fiore Cos.' current plan is more expensive, costing the library cost $43 million compared to $38 million for T. Wall's library.

Fiore developer William Kunkler argued Thursday that the increased property taxes from developing the entire block, as well as the possibility of additional revenue from hotel room taxes if a proposed hotel is completed in Phase 2, could mean much greater benefit to the city over time. Over 27 years, Kunkler projected the city could gain $70 million from the Fiore project, compared to $20 million from the T. Wall building.

The difficult economy, however, may mean that neither project will get built, as there are funding gaps of at least $16 million with each project. Madison Public Library Board chair Tripp Widder said the board will be asking for an analysis from the Madison Public Library Foundation on how much of that can be raised from private donations.

Widder said the option of renovating the current structure will also be analyzed in an independent study. Many of the systems in the current 43-year-old structure need to be replaced, making renovation expensive in itself.

Kristin Czubkowski  —  1/09/2009 11:25 am