Overcrowding and poor lighting are two of city officials’ main concerns with some of Madison’s heavily populated nightlife hot spots following an Aug. 25 downtown walkthrough. 

Making their way down State Street and looping back up University Avenue, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, a group of downtown alders, representatives from several different city commissions and a number of Madison Police Department officials scoped out the downtown area for points that were dangerously overpopulated or dark.

Soglin said this tour would probably serve as the first in a series of downtown evaluations. 

At the end of the tour, Soglin said some of the main concerns included some dark crevices that could be lit up and some “pinch points,” where sidewalks get overcrowded.

Officials are particularly concerned with the “S” formed along the path from University Avenue at Lake Street to Frances Street at State Street and then continuing to wrap around the 500 block of State by Whiskey Jack’s Saloon.

“We already knew about this pinch point, but we wanted to revisit this and others to find ways for better lighting and avoid overcrowding,” Alcohol Policy Coordinator Mark Woulf said. “We need to observe the physical space available when there are not large crowds, but we found the area could also use more lighting between Frances and State.”

At various points throughout the “S,” city officials saw bar-goers and passersby flowing off the sidewalk and into University Avenue, causing a safety concern, Woulf said.

He said areas such as outside Johnny O’s and Segredo where bar-goers are subjected to an overpopulated environment mean there could be a higher possibility for fights breaking out.

The group evaluated the idea of bringing back guardrails between the sidewalk and roadway on University. In the next few weeks, officials will meet to review the problems they saw and the practicality of the potential solutions brought up during the tour.

“This is all part of a continued open conversation with State Street bars,” Woulf said. “We will be meeting with the bars in the coming weeks to get the safety message out in order to further an open dialogue.”

Soglin said although the area surveyed has been the recent site of numerous physical altercations and a recent sexual assault, no single incident triggered the downtown walk through.

“When I came back into office in 1989, I did the same thing,” Soglin said. “Still, we are concerned about some violence we’ve had in terms of fights and sexual assaults – the tolerance level is certainly zero.”

Soglin said he intends to organize a number of other walks in the coming weeks so that city personnel can get a better idea of the downtown venues in different environments. Walks will take place both during the day and the night, particularly between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m. on the weekends, and Soglin said he was considering the prospect of heading up a State Street bar crawl to allow for further evaluation.

Still, Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, said city officials only looked at one of two important issues in the downtown area during their most recent survey. He said while he believes safety is the more important issue, officials should also be looking into the underage drinking problem.

Adding more scanners into the downtown bars in an effort to combat illegal consumption is a separate but relevant issue in relation to the concerns raised during the survey, Resnick said.

“Tonight was really about how to prevent fights and dangerous situations – we were literally shining lights into dark allies,” Resnick said. “But we’re really looking to create a safer environment, which requires us to focus on these two separate issues.”