Reflections/Jonathan Gramling
A Looming Shadow on South Madison
The Milwaukee Metropolitan area was a fascinating place to me as I was coming of age in the 1960s. Although I grew up in the western suburb of Elm Grove, through the news and the “adventures” of my older brothers, I was are of what was going on in Milwaukee. And when my brother, cousins and I went down the Mississippi River on a raft from St. Louis to New Orleans one summer, we were delayed returning home because Milwaukee was under a 24/7 curfew because of the riots going on in 1967.
Some of the conflict — in my opinion — was caused by the urban planning going on that looked at the big picture of arranging for easy and timely transportation by car from the suburbs to downtown Milwaukee. During this process, they should have looked at the small pictures that were impacted along the way. For the ease of suburban drivers, the heart of Milwaukee’s Black commercial district was essentially destroyed as the housing for the residents who fed it were knocked down to make way for the freeway. An impoverished community was further impoverished because of the big-picture urban design that didn’t seriously take the interests of the Black community into consideration when designing and routing the I-43 freeway. People were still trapped by segregation, but now some of their economic means had been seriously hampered and destroyed.
On a much smaller scale, I feel that macro urban planning has made plans for South Madison and the S. Park Street corridor that put a shadow on the Black community — and especially its economic sector.
A couple of months ago, Dr. Ruben Anthony Jr., CEO of he Urban League of Greater Madison wrote an opinion piece for The Hues in which he talked about the City of Madison’s plan to have an imposing structure built at the corner of S. Park Street and Badger Road. This building will rise up eight stories right from the curb where those streets intersect, blocking the view of buildings to the north including nthe Urban League’s Black Business Hub.
Anthony stated in his column: “During two recent public meetings with the Alexander Group and its development team, community members voiced these concerns, particularly about the risk of diminishing the architectural prominence of the Black Business Hub. Unfortunately, these concerns were met with minimal acknowledgment and a lack of demonstrated care or empathy from the planning team.”
The planning team had a more macro view in mind at the expense of the micro view that the South Madison folks had in mind.
This reminds me of the time back in the 1960s when the City of Madison commissioned a mural for a retaining wall that overlooked Lake Monona along John Nolen Drive. It was a beautiful mural whose visibility was cut short when the Monona Terrace Convention Center was built a few years later. The supports and the parking structure basically hid the mural from public view. You can still see it as you race by at 35 mph with most cars driving at a higher rate of speed. You really have to be looking for it as you drive by in the shadowed spaces created by Monona Terrace.
It was a classic case, in my estimation, of city funding that ends up at cross-purposes. The City funded the mural and it also funded Monona Terrace. The big picture project overshadowed and hid the smaller city project.
And I can’t help but feel that the same is happening in South Madison with the Urban League’s Black Business Hub and the structure for the corner of S. Park and Badger Road that will be twice as tall as The Hub. And this building will overshadow and hide The Hub, which is an expression of the Black Aesthetic. I interviewed Fareeq Asad, the architect of the Black Business Hub. And this is how he described the architecture:
“It’s a number of different principles like angularity, bold use of color, pattern texture, simplicity, lots of gray between the indoor/outdoor space and things like that,” Asad said about the Black Aesthetic. “It was very intentional to design a Black building. You don’t always see that in Madison. Serving on the Urban Design Commission, we see a lot of buildings that come before us that are tan and gray. They have just a mild color pattern. Knowing what this building was to the Urban League as the iconic economic generator for the community and entrepreneurship and serving as this hub for innovation, we wanted the building materials, the colors, the form to be iconic as well and be this bold statement in what is becoming a major gateway to Madison along that S. Park Street corridor.”
Ythje Black Business Hub is a statement about Black businesses — and other businesses of color — in South Madison. South Madison is the “home” of Madison’s Black and Latine communities and has a number of Black and Latine businesses located there and the number keeps on growing.
The Black Business Hub is an important economic symbol in South Madison. And then now an eight story building is going to overshadow it and obscure it much as the beautiful mural was obscured by Monona Terrace. The degree that it is obscured could possibly be made worse by what will be built on the other side of Park Street at Badger Road.
Now as the editor & publisher of The Capital City Hues, I get around the city on a weekly, if not daily basis. I enter the City of Madison on each street that feeds into it on a constant basis, be it E. Washington Avenue from I90/I39, Hwy 30, Monona Drive, John Nolen Drive, Rimrock Road, S. Park Street, Fish Hatchery Road, Todd Drive, Seminole Highway, Verona Road, Whitney Way, Gammon Road, Mineral Point Road, Old Sauk Road, University Avenue, Northport Drive, Hwy 51/Stoughton Road and so on. Unless I am blind and totally oblivious, there are no eight story buildings at the entrance to the City of Madison. Please correct me if I am wrong.
So why is this happening in South Madison? Is it once again an instance of the big urban planning picture trampling over the micro-planning interests of communities of color? Isn’t there a way to take everyone’s interests into account while still making the project feasible?
I was the chair of the South Madison Community Development Corporation in the late 1980s. We dreamed of the level of economic activity of Black and Latine businesses. It hurts to see someone cast a shadow over that activity. I pray that it isn’t the same old, same old. Please say it isn’t so.