Members of the Madison Library Board voted in favor of taking the first step to replace Central Library on the 200 block of Mifflin Street Thursday.
Don Marx of the City Planning Department walked board and community members through city ordinances for selling public property, in light of T. Wall Property’s proposal to purchase the existing library and construct a new multi-use space that would include three floors of a library and office space.
He added the economic development director and the director of the planning department then consult with an alder to determine if it is in the city’s best interest to sell the property by direct sale or a bid process.
Tripp Widder, president of the Madison Library Board, said T. Wall Property’s proposed building is an important enough project that it should go the Request for Proposal route, adding direct sale just “kind of smacks (of) us cutting some sort of a deal.”
The ordinance for the RFP path requires the creation of a criteria selection committee, which is appointed by the mayor.
Board members expressed their concern for the formation of such a committee, saying they would prefer five library board members with Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, and another alder on the mayor’s seven-person panel.
According to Ray Harmon, assistant to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the mayor is OK with appointing members recommended by those attending the meeting.
Attendees also addressed the importance of fundraising to initiate the project.
“In my own mind, I have always felt that what is critical to the success of any project and this one, which would be on a faster timeline, is there would have to be in hand a significant private component before we can authorize proceeding,” Widder said. “Again by significant I mean … $5 million plus.”
Widder added it would be “irresponsible” to go forward without that funding. The chief source of such a sum would be private donation. A major donor would likely receive naming rights to what board member Barb Karlen called the “glamorous, sexy” new building.
The current budget for the library is roughly $20 million. In addition to $5 million raised privately, $3 to 5 million is expected to come from land sale proceeds, and $11 million from capital funding.
The developer, T. Wall Properties, originally approached the Madison Public Library with their proposal for a nine-story structure with restaurants and office space in addition to the new library in a meeting Tuesday.
Widder said the building “would have more public space so we would expect more visitors. … One of the issues we have here is the library administration, book storage, cataloguing a lot of non-public functions are done here, so we would hope to end up with more public space accessible to the public.”
