There should be green spaces, as well as “green” infrastructure throughout. Make room for plenty of public art, and public spaces where artists can work. Make it easily accessible from all forms of transportation — even kayaks! — and put a BCycle station right out front.
And, of course, it should be dog-friendly.
Or, maybe not.
These were among the suggestions visitors made at the first public unveiling of plans for the new Madison Public Market on May 8. The city plans to turn the Madison Fleet Service Division headquarters at 200 N. First St. into the market — a small-business incubator and public gathering space — by the latter part of 2021.
For the creative and architectural team at MSR Design, the Minneapolis firm contracted to oversee the transformation, these ideas are helping to guide the final revisions, which will be unveiled in a second public viewing tentatively slated for the first week in September.
“We’re really excited about it,” says Traci Lesneski, the MSR principal guiding the project. “The fleet building has offered us the chance to do something unique.”
Dan Kennelly, who is heading the public-sector side of the property transition initiative, was pleased with the turnout at the May event. “We had about 1,000 people come through,” says Kennelly, manager of the city of Madison Office of Business Resources. “I think walking into the actual space opened people’s eyes to the building’s potential, and those I talked to were excited by the design concepts.”
The facility has 18-foot ceilings, large overhead doors and “great bones,” says Kennelly.
Attendees at the May 8 open house were encouraged to comment on the design with Post-it notes supplied by organizers. A total of 89 comments were collected and logged into a report shared with MSR Design. These included concerns about recycling organic waste and keeping vendors local, and requests for kayak parking, beer, no dogs, dog-friendliness, and “no orange in color scheme.”
“There was a strong theme of caring for the environment, sustainability and use of daylight,” says Lesneski, whose firm has designed and repurposed other Madison buildings for both the city and UW-Madison. “It’s what I equate with a Madison ethos, and I love that it so strongly came through.”
The designers have already begun developing different types of “streetscapes,” or aisle widths, to suggest a more urban landscape complete with canopies and suggestions of tree cover, says Lesneski.
“Every move we make will have to serve multiple functions, and that will be the biggest intervention you will see in the building’s architecture,” she says. “The rest of our efforts will be to not get in the way of the ‘coolness’ of the original building.
“It will have an open-to-all ethos and be welcoming to the entire community,” she adds.
The market site moved west from its original proposed location at First Street and East Washington Avenue in late 2018 at the behest of former Mayor Paul Soglin, who wanted to reuse the fleet facility that the city planned to replace with a new, larger service headquarters.
Value to vendors and opportunity for increased entrepreneurship that the market will provide is what interests Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. Her only concern is that the market doesn’t become dependent on public coffers to survive.
“The market needs to support itself on an operating basis without the help of public funds,” Rhodes-Conway says. “The market is a want, not a need, for the city, and there shouldn’t be any public money subsidizing operating expenses.”
Despite her concerns, Rhodes-Conway is excited by the concept, especially in terms of the city residents it will serve and visitors it likely will attract.
“The real benefit to a program like this is the entrepreneurship it will foster, the employment it will provide, and the wealth growth it will create,” she says. “There are a ton of people interested in the Market Ready program developed to help vendors prepare, and that is the most exciting part of all of this.
The city fleet repair facility, built in 1953, boasts a footprint of 44,600 square feet on a property that also contains two outbuildings, a 6,925-square-foot facility used for fleet services storage that will now be used for market storage, and a 4,046-square-foot structure that will continue to be used for police evidence storage. The outbuildings will not be renovated.
Of the nearly 45,000 square feet available, 15,000 will be given over to vendor space, with individual stall sizes yet to be determined.
The rest of the rehabbed floor plan will include an entry hall, seating, an event space, a community room and a market kitchen, in addition to rest rooms, aisles and administrative offices.
What the public market is not meant to be, Kennelly says, is an additional food source for the neighborhood’s groceries, or a year-round daily version of the Dane County Farmers’ Market.
Megan Ballard, the project manager newly appointed by the Madison Public Market Foundation, will help shepherd the initiative.
“We have interest from some 200 vendors,” Ballard says. The space would be adequate for roughly 30 vendors, according to Ballard.
Micro-businesses including craft vendors, small retail and food sales will form the focal point of the market. Pop-up stands and specialty holiday market areas held during various holidays located in the market’s public spaces also are being considered, again with an eye toward providing opportunities for small scale startups.
The Foundation is seeking anchor tenants such as a coffee shop, taproom, cafe or grocery store to help drive traffic to the market, which likely will be open year-round during normal business hours either five or seven days a week, Ballard says.
The price of the project has been budgeted at $13 million, of which the city is on the hook for $7.5 million, Kennelly says. The city will retain ownership of the building with no plans of charging rent to the Foundation, which Ballard says will operate the market.
The building will require work to mitigate lead and asbestos used in the original construction. The soil also will be treated because, like much of the rest of the east isthmus, it consists of a lower grade “fill” that will require some improvement efforts.
The Foundation has already raised $1 million as part of an initial $4 million capital campaign to financially shore up its part of the market development program. New market tax credits also are being offered by the city to help offset costs.
“The Foundation has secured several large donors already, and a lot of people are interested in seeing the final design,” Ballard explains. “We expect the capital campaign to kick into high gear by the fall.”
Fleet services is scheduled to move to its new Nakoosa Trail garage in late 2020, after which physical renovation of the market space will begin. In the meantime, Kennelly says approved design plans will be converted into construction blueprints and the Foundation will continue its development and planning efforts so all component parts are ready by the anticipating opening date of the market in late 2021.
