The City of Madison Plan Commission voted again to reject the proposal to build the Hub II apartment complex on Langdon Street Monday.
The Hub Ⅱ was proposed by Core Spaces, the same developers of The James and the Hub in Madison. Following Core Spaces’ decision to not make revisions after a prior rejection in 2020, the City Plan Commission did not approve the Hub II project Monday night for the third time.
The seven-story apartment complex on 126 Langdon Street was originally proposed in December 2019. With the location in close proximity to much of the University of Wisconsin student housing areas, including Greek life properties, concerns from local students and residents in Madison regarding Hub II have remained strong since its proposal.
Specifically, the proposal has received strong opposition from the Campus Area Neighborhood Association. CANA is a grassroots, non-profit advocacy group that meets regularly to build civic engagement, community solidarity and neighborhood advocacy for the residents of the University of Wisconsin campus and related areas.
Hub II team says development will include “sustainability measures”
In an email statement to The Badger Herald, President of CANA Amol Goyal said Core Spaces had the opportunity to alter their proposal but declined to do so.
“It primarily falls on the developer to listen carefully to the feedback it received meeting after meeting, make necessary and appropriate revisions to its proposal and submit a project that would contain the mass, size and scale compatible with the area in which the project seeks to live,” Goyal said.
CANA submitted a Committee Report to the City of Madison Plan Commission on March 8 in opposition to Hub II. In the report, the committee expressed serious discomfort with the proposal and said it does not believe Core Spaces is willing or able to manage the property in the long term.
Additionally, the committee said in the report the building will not provide safety and security sufficient for a healthy living experience for UW students and other residents of the area. Ultimately, Goyal said the Hub Ⅱ is not financially realistic to low-income students or other Madisonians.
“At best, the Hub II will contain market-rate or just below-market-rate rent prices, which is not sufficient to protect individuals of low-income backgrounds on or off the university campus,” Goyal said.
In the report, structural complaints from other Core Spaces complexes, including The James and the Hub, were listed. This included splintering floors over the winter, week-long delays to apartment maintenance issues, noise complaints, unauthorized guests sharing each others’ wristbands to enter the buildings’ rooftop pools and other reasons.
Multiple other concerns such as sustainability, general welfare and security issues, building management plan, site circulation, driveway, subleasing, affordability, bonus stories and more can be found in CANA’s report.
Goyal said the organization believes the efforts of CANA made a difference in the commissioners’ vote and attributes the success to the many groups who participated in public forums.
“The Campus Area Neighborhood Association is grateful for everyone’s involvement, including all grassroots organizers, neighbors, students, parents and community activists, for voicing their opposition to this in the public forum — I think it really helped,” Goyal said.
