Following Tuesday’s Common Council decision to accept new developer proposals for the Judge Doyle Square project, city officials are stepping back to refocus.
Ald. David Ahrens, District 15, said the city voted twice on where to go with the project Tuesday. The first vote was for whether to drop the project entirely, which lost 11-8. The second, Ahrens said, was to issue a new Request for Proposals for developers and begin the process from the beginning, which passed.
However, Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said rather than see it as a step backwards, he hopes the council’s vote will allow the city to start fresh and hear some new proposals from developers who may have not tried to get involved in the past.
“It allows us to regroup and refocus and perhaps start fresh in terms of trying to garner interest from other developers, which I know is out there,” Verveer said.
After five years and more than $1 million spent in studies looking into the feasibility of the project, Ahrens said it will be another several months until the project gets back on track.
The original project included an internal renovation of the Madison Municipal Building, the reconstruction of the Government East parking garage on East Wilson Street and a new hotel to accommodate business at the Monona Terrace Convention Center.
To the members of the the Judge Doyle Square Committee, the longevity of the project has been “fatiguing,” Verveer said.
“There’s no denying that many of us had lost enthusiasm in the project as time went by. The project … seemed like it was never-ending, it seemed like there was no real light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
A lot of debate came when the original developer for the hotel, JDS Development LLC, asked for the city to fund roughly half the cost, about $50 million, required to build it, Ahrens said.
Ahrens said he does not think the city should be involved in funding a hotel.
“My view has been, from the very beginning, that the city doesn’t need to do a hotel project at all … It’s not an appropriate role for a city,” Ahrens said. “We wouldn’t ask the Hilton to run our fire department, and we shouldn’t be building and investing in hotels. We shouldn’t put a penny into it.”
JDS Development has not yet expressed interest in applying for the project again, Verveer said. The city has already heard from other developers, such as CD Smith out of Fond Du Lac and the North Central Group of Madison.
Ahrens said the city should have a Request for Proposals approved by the end of January and prospective developers will have around three months to send in their proposals.
Though it will set the project back at least several more months, Verveer said he thinks the city’s decision will “make for a better project eventually.”
“Hopefully, although in the short run this will mean a delay of progress, I’m optimistic that in the long run we’ll look back and decide that the city council did the right thing,” he said.
