[media-credit name=’TAYLOR HUGHES/Herald illustration’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]A Madison resident walked into her living room one evening and found her two children standing by the bay window, staring rather attentively at the house across the street.

Intrigued by what could possibly grip their attention in their quiet neighborhood less than three blocks away from Camp Randall, the woman went over to investigate — and within seconds shut the curtains and shooed her children away.

"There was porno playing on almost every single TV in that house and each one was facing the window," the woman said, asking to remain anonymous so as to not embarrass her neighbors.

"I guess it goes with the territory, though," she added.

Welcome to the Regent neighborhood — home to a unique blend of University of Wisconsin students and Madison residents living side-by-side in a peculiar harmony, despite leading near-polar-opposite lifestyles.

One is a world of early mornings and sedans, the other of late nights and mo-peds.

And, if recent trends continue, many traditional student neighborhoods in Madison will begin to look a lot like it.

Over the past five years, city leaders have noticed two simultaneous shifts in the student housing market pulling against each other.

On one end is the influx of high-rise apartments popping up downtown, drawing students closer to campus.

On the other are the free bus passes — courtesy of the Associated Students of Madison — giving students access to different housing options further away from campus on the outskirts of town.

As these two forces pull away from each other, what's left in the middle are a lot of empty houses in neighborhoods that have been predominantly occupied by UW students for more than a half-century — such as the Greenbush, Vilas, East Johnson and even Mifflin Street neighborhoods.

"What it has led to, in some ways, is the hollowing out of the old student neighborhoods," City Council President Austin King said. "It is a change that is very large and affects a huge percentage of the undergraduate population."

With vacancy rates rising, George Twigg, spokesperson for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, said the city is now faced with a dilemma.

"What do we do with that stock of rental housing that's out there now?" Twigg asked. "What do we do with the housing stocks that are becoming less and less what students choose for their rentals?"

One possible idea, Twigg said, is for the city to partner with UW to help convert vacant, multi-tenant apartments in traditional student neighborhoods into single-family or owner-occupied homes for university faculty and staff.

As students have found more attractive housing options elsewhere, some Madison real estate owners, such as Steve Brown Apartments, have been more willing to sell their rental properties in traditional student neighborhoods.

And according to UW Associate Vice Chancellor Alan Fish, the university is intrigued.

Looking for a way to cut down on the number of commuting faculty and staff, Fish said UW is interested in creating a program to help its employees find affordable homes within walking distance of campus — making traditional student neighborhoods like Mifflin an appealing target.

"We know we have employees who would like to live closer to work," Fish said. "If some of our employees can afford to live in these neighborhoods and the quality of life for their families would be improved, we want to take advantage of this window of opportunity."

With students moving out, and more Madison families likely moving in, both city and university leaders see these traditional student neighborhoods going through a period of transition — resulting in a greater mix of college and out-of-college lifestyles than ever before.

The echo-boomer effect

According to the Madison Department of Planning and Development, more than 740 multi-family units have been constructed in downtown Madison since 2001, most notably the large-scale apartment buildings such as the Equinox and the Aberdeen on West Gorham Street.

Though every project was clearly not on the same scale as the handful of high-rise apartments, the numbers reflect what King described as the new "canyon corridor" in downtown Madison.

"There has been an increase in new, very dense housing close to campus," King said, "adding thousands of new beds within a stone's throw of the Humanities building."

As the high-rises sprang up, UW students left their old neighborhoods and moved in, contributing to a Madison city vacancy rate that increased every fall from 2000 to 2005 — from 3.9 percent in the fall of 2000 to 6.43 percent in 2005 — before dropping to 5.7 percent in fall 2006.

Driving the demand for high-rise apartments, according to Steve Brown Apartments CEO Margaret Watson, are the millions of now-college-aged echo-boomers — the sons and daughters of the baby boomer generation born in the mid-1980s.

"Students have been requiring different things from the industry that they want, in terms of space, location and amenities," Watson said. "It's our belief that it's really the lifestyle changes of the echo-boomers that is driving the demand."

And the real estate community has responded.

Beginning in 1995, Watson said Steve Brown has been selling many of its rental properties in traditional student neighborhoods — such as Mifflin Street and Vilas — and reinvesting the capital in larger apartment projects downtown.

One of those projects is the new apartment building currently going up on the old University Square property.

"Steve Brown has made the shift," Watson said. "We're concentrating our properties in the demand areas."

Leaving the door wide-open for the University of Wisconsin to move in and occupy the old student neighborhoods.

UW knocks on the door

Among the most common complaints the university receives from the Madison community at large and from its own employees involve traffic and parking — namely too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

In an effort to quiet the consistent moaning, the university came up with an idea to help UW employees move close enough to campus so they can leave the cars at home and walk to campus instead.

The university is currently in the process of surveying its employees to gauge how many would be interested in a "workforce housing" program that would help them acquire converted single-family homes in traditional student neighborhoods like Mifflin.

And if the demand is there, Fish said the university wants, and needs, to act quickly.

"Because of the housing market, we have an opportunity right now to take advantage," Fish said. "If it doesn't happen in the next five to 10 years, I have a fear the window of opportunity will close."

However, despite concerns that the opportunity for such a program might be short-lived, Fish emphasized that, most likely, nothing would happen in the immediate future since there are a number of considerations the university still has to take into account.

Fish said the university is still a year or two away from developing a program.

"Right now, many of those properties are still worth a lot more as apartments than they are as homes," Fish said. "There's going to have to be a tipping point in the economy where those landlords feel it's a better decision to sell out than to keep them as rental properties."

And as vacancy rates continue to rise, the housing market is already teetering, which is why Fish said the university wants to be prepared.

Out in the boondocks

Last fall, University of Wisconsin juniors Alonso Maciel and Rocky Manning moved in with fellow junior Brittany Alioto into a quiet, no-name neighborhood off Speedway Street on the west side of Madison.

Though no statistics are available to reflect it, the three roommates represent what city leaders see as another growing trend in student housing:

Migrating beyond "off-campus" … all the way out to Madison's boondocks.

When she was deserted by her roommate freshman year, Alioto's parents, who own the house on Hammersly Avenue, gave their daughter an ultimatum — either find someone to pick up half the rent or move out.

Fortunately, Alioto found herself in the same class as someone desperately looking for a cheaper alternative to the housing options he found near campus.

"It's really expensive living down there (near campus)," Maciel said. "I looked at some of the apartments near campus, and not only were they really nasty, but you had to live with four or five people just to make it affordable."

Alioto offered a better price: $375 a month to live in a two-story house complete with an office, a garage, something called a "breezeway" and not only a front yard but a side yard large enough to fit a hammock.

However, the kicker that made it all worthwhile, Maciel said, were the ASM bus passes that allowed the three students to travel to and from campus for free via Madison Metro — a golden ticket that King said more and more UW students are taking advantage of.

"It is one of the major trends in the past five to 10 years," King said. "When every UW student got a bus pass, many of them decided to live in nontraditional apartments far away from campus."

But, if Madison Metro continues to fall short of holding up its part of the bargain, Maciel said he may not have any choice but to move back closer to campus.

Entirely dependent on the bus to get to class on time, Maciel said the bus service this year has consistently arrived late or, on a number of occasions this year, not at all.

"Last year it was cool. It was really easy to take the bus," Maciel said. "But, this year it's been really poor, poor service. Sometimes you're waiting up to a half-hour for your bus, others times it just doesn't show up at all or drives by without picking anybody up."

Despite the daily gamble with the buses, all three roommates agreed that the benefits of living in a quiet neighborhood would most likely keep them on Hammersely Avenue, at least for the time being.

Serenity now

It's early September and the cement grandstands of Camp Randall tower over a group of Regent neighborhood residents gathering at the corner of Summit Avenue and Breese Terrace.

"And make sure to remind them that, even though it's a Thursday, Thanksgiving is not a garbage pick-up day," Ron Rosner tells the group of a dozen people, who will walk around the neighborhood distributing fliers listing trash collection days, contact numbers and other pertinent information to new residents.

The walk-around is part of a neighborhood effort to help people who just moved into the neighborhood — mostly students — get acclimated to their new surroundings.

Consider it a welcome brigade, reminding new residents, "We're here to help, but please don't wake us up at 3 a.m. or park your mopeds on our lawn."

"A lot of the neighbors do the walk-around to help students understand that they are living in an area with families," said Ald. Robbie Webber, District 5, while joining the Regent neighborhood residents on their walk-around. "Sometimes undergraduates move in and say, 'Hey, great, we have a party house.' Well, no you don't."

UW senior Tyler Turner, a five-year resident of Regent neighborhood, described it as a constant balance between the two worlds.

"There are people who have been in the neighborhood for 20 years and know how they want the neighborhood to look and how they want it to be represented," Turner said. "Meanwhile we, as students, are in the middle of nowhere and don't necessarily think the same way our neighbors do. It's a delicate balance between what your neighbors want and what you want."

At some point, however, the "wants" of the two different cultures begin to converge.

Much like Maciel and his roommates, Turner said one of the main reasons he and his roommates choose to live in the Regent neighborhood is because of the quiet atmosphere.

A member of the UW wrestling team, Turner lives with five teammates and a football player, and said the neighborhood environment helps all of them avoid the various distractions that arise closer to campus.

"I don't think a lot of the guys realize the huge impact the house and the people in the neighborhood have had on them," Turner said. "Being able to focus on your sport and academics is a huge blessing."

And then there are always Saturday gamedays, which every resident agreed could be ruled out as just another typical day in the neighborhood.

"If you're going to complain about that, you shouldn't even live here," explained Sara Patterson, a nine-year resident of the Regent neighborhood. "Just as long as they clean up afterwards."