Student activists and community members had another opportunity to voice their concerns about the proposal to build a high-end apartment building on the 400 block of West Mifflin Street at a neighborhood meeting Thursday.
West Mifflin Neighborhood Association member Peggy LeMahieu said the association hosted the meeting to foster a collaborative effort between the planners and the community for the rest of the project’s planning process.
“The point of this meeting is to meet each others’ needs and come to a consensus,” LeMahieu said.
Although a final agreement on how to best accommodate both the interests of community members and the planner was not finalized, both sides were given a chance to voice their concerns about the plan.
Building developer Pat McCaughey said his designers were working feverishly to redraw the design of the building to comply with what the city planning staff and the Save Mifflin student activist group had requested by his Friday morning deadline.
McCaughey also said the Save Mifflin initiative combating the proposal seems to be losing support.
“I was a little scared at first when [Save Mifflin] came out,” McCaughey said. “But there’s not overwhelming support for them.”
LeMahieu said the four-story building’s height and mass do not maintain the integrity of the Mifflin area, an issue that has been raised a number of times throughout the planning process.
Committee members also raised concerns about the lack of neighborhood involvement in the early stages of the proposal. Members of the association had previously voiced concerns that the Save Mifflin movement was brought up too late in the planning process.
LeMahieu said there was a void in community activism, and students failed to involve themselves in the beginning of the process.
UW junior Kate Robertson, a Save Mifflin member, said students were kept in the dark throughout most of the process.
She said the students could have easily been included earlier in the process if they had heard about the proposal before receiving mailed fliers inviting them to a neighborhood meeting.
McCaughey said the plan was put in the works in July, and students could have accessed the information sooner.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said he has been working with both sides of the issue to reach a collaborative end, and the plan must still pass through the Madison City Council meeting Feb. 22.
