Alexander Company proposes turning the mill into a $20.5 million 'event center.'
When Carl Landsness was growing up on Madison's near east side in the 1950s and '60s, the whole Schenk-Atwood neighborhood was his playground.
"It was a little boy's dream," he says of the childhood he spent exploring the nearby factories and railroad tracks, clambering over dumpsters and tromping through Starkweather Creek and the surrounding marshland.
One of the places he remembers best is the Garver Feed Mill -- a sprawling, two-story brick building constructed in 1905 as a sugar beet processing facility and later converted into a feed mill.
The Garver Feed and Supply Co. closed its doors in 1997; that same year, the city acquired the mill and surrounding property with hopes that it could be used for future expansion of the nearby Olbrich Botanical Gardens.
But in the mid-2000s, city officials set their sights on rehabilitating the local landmark, only to have their plans stalled by disagreement and economic recession. Now, years later, the mill sits crumbling and unused, with the land around it wild and undeveloped.
Because the land is treasured by people like Landsness, figuring out how best to use it has never been a simple task for the city.
These days, Landsness' former boyhood haunt has become a place to reflect and commune with nature as he walks the 22 acres of open space surrounding the historic mill.
"For me, green space " and that green space in particular -- has been a lifeline for my own personal sanity," Landsness says. "Walking on that land -- alone with nature, without people -- I get more healing on that land and creek than any other place."
Decades of indecision
Tucked away behind Olbrich Botanical Gardens, the Garver property is a relic of Madison's industrial past. And for decades, city officials and neighborhood residents have been struggling to decide its future.
"[The disagreement] has only gotten worse over time," says Ald. David Ahrens, who has lived near Garver for more than 30 years.
Ahrens says he has heard "every possible opinion" from his constituents about what should be done with Garver, ranging from demolishing the building and forgetting it ever existed to fully developing the site for residential housing.
Last month, four companies submitted proposals to rehabilitate the crumbling brick "sugar castle." Now, the city is weighing options that include a $19.8 million "artisan food production facility," a $20.5 million "event center," a $39.3 million general housing complex and a $39.8 million senior housing facility.
"I think there are proponents for every one of those proposals," Ahrens says. "I've heard from local people who think that any one of them is a terrific idea."
The city will contribute $1.8 million to whichever plan is chosen. Three of the four plans treat the city's money as a grant; the event center proposal will treat it as a loan that will be paid back over 99 years.
Ald. Marsha Rummel says her constituents are hoping for a development that provides a mixture of land stewardship and added amenities to the neighborhood. Synergy with the nearby Olbrich Botanical Gardens is important.
"We have four unique and interesting proposals," Rummel says. "They all seem like they could actually help restore this landmark."
The city's Garver Feed Mill Criteria and Selection Committee will meet three more times in the coming months, with the four developers presenting their proposals on Jan. 22. The public will have the opportunity to comment at its third meeting on Feb. 26, and the committee hopes to make a decision at its fourth meeting on March 18. Its recommendation will then go to the Common Council for a vote.
A neighborhood issue
The proposed Garver development is a "complex and important issue" for the Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara neighborhood, says Jason Tish, an at-large member of the neighborhood association who serves on its preservation and development committee.
"We're really excited to have four viable proposals," Tish says. "There was a fear that there would be no viable proposals submitted."
Each of the development submissions has advantages and disadvantages. A residential housing complex would provide a tax base for the city and bring an influx of customers to local businesses, but the event center and local food production facility would offer more opportunities for neighborhood residents to interact with the property, Tish says. However, the latter two options may prove more difficult to sustain economically.
"My concern is keeping the business open," Ahrens says. "It's really necessary [for the developers] to show their business plan."
Though the neighborhood association has not yet discussed or endorsed a proposal, Tish says he believes that housing is the "least popular" option in the neighborhood. There's also a "general consensus" among residents that they'd like to see a "good portion" of the green space around the development remain available for public use.
With open green space at a premium in the heavily developed and populated east side, the Garver property is an important resource for the neighborhood.
Says Tish: "It's a cultural resource, it's a public access resource, and I guess you could say it's a natural resource."
DNR deed restriction
Before the city can move forward with any Garver development, there's a bureaucratic hurdle to clear.
In order to redevelop the mill, the city will have to create a new park of an equivalent size somewhere else in the city.
The five-acre parcel that houses the historic mill and the 17-acre area that surrounds it -- known as the North Plat -- are both under a deed restriction from the state Department of Natural Resources that prohibits the land from being used for anything other than park space, says Dan Rolfs, a community development project manager with the city of Madison's Office of Real Estate Services.
"We can't sell the building or enter into a ground lease without DNR permission," Rolfs says.
The city can work around this by purchasing new parkland that is equal to the size of the proposed Garver development. The new parkland must also include some sort of water feature -- a stream, river or lake -- to satisfy the provisions of the DNR's urban water grant.
The DNR's recreational grant program dates back to the 1960s, and conversion provisions are included by state statute, says Doug Haag, deputy director of the agency's Bureau of Facility and Lands. Conversions are fairly common, with the DNR handling 20 to 30 each year -- usually for things like road development, highway expansion and urban development.
"Things change over time," Haag says. "In order to allow urban planning to occur, it's important to let local communities dictate their own urban growth plan."
To pay for the new parkland, the city will use impact fees collected from new developments. The money has already been collected and is earmarked for improvements to the city's park system, but the purchase would require a budget amendment since the expenditure was not included in the city's 2015 budget.
Meanwhile, Rolfs says the city's parks, planning and real estate divisions are working together to identify options for a new park. It will most likely be within the city of Madison, but it could come as an annexation from a nearby town.
Since a final decision on a developer is still several months away and because each of the four proposals calls for different amounts of land, the city must wait to see which one is selected before it makes any decision on what replacement parkland to purchase.
"The best way to describe it is putting a jet together in midflight," Rolfs says. "If it doesn't work, we're going to crash into the mountains. But it's our job to make it work."