Development trumps neighborhood plan approval

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Paul Snyder
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For the first time in city history, Madison is approving just pieces of a neighborhood plan to accommodate a proposed development.

That does not sit well with one city leader; she argues Madison should take an all-or-nothing approach in reviewing such development guidelines.

“I’m deeply dismayed,” said Alderwoman Lauren Cnare. “This is an inappropriate way to do business.”

But with a 28-acre residential development proposal planned for the area, approving the Shady Wood Neighborhood Development Plan in portions is the fairest option available, said city planner Michael Waidelich.

The city’s Plan Commission last month approved guidelines for just 34 acres of the neighborhood plan that eventually will govern 600 acres in the neighborhood. The commission chose to take six months to review the rest of the plan for the neighborhood, which includes large tracts of land in the town of Verona.

But the Madison Common Council earlier this month overturned the commission’s piecemeal decision and sent it back for reconsideration.

The Plan Commission on Monday again chose to approve a plan for the 34 acres.

Waidelich said a landowner with about 28 acres in the approved section is working on a residential development for the property. Although city staff has not received a formal plan for the development, Waidelich said, there is a lot of early support for the idea.

“So we could hold up the one part of the plan that nobody has any trouble with,” Waidelich said, “or we could adopt the whole other part before all the concerned residents get a chance to speak.”

Brian Munson, a principal with Vandewalle, was unavailable to comment on the development before deadline Wednesday.

The city’s willingness to work with developers to keep the process moving is a welcome change for Madison’s development community, said Erik Minton, a Madison developer with Twenty/Fifteen LLC.

“The neighborhood plan process is always vastly too long and vastly unclear,” he said. “They’re responsive rather than proactive and can have developers waiting two, three or four years.”

Minton earlier this year finally earned approval for a mixed-use development in Madison’s Bassett Neighborhood after four years of city rejections and plan alterations so the project would better conform to the neighborhood plan.

He said he also worked on a project that waited three years for development of a neighborhood plan, which ultimately meant his proposal was out of character with the neighborhood’s vision.

“If these plans were solely there for the goodwill and benefit of the community, that would be one thing,” Minton said. “But a lot of times, they’re simply there to stop development.”

But Cnare said development accommodations, such as that taking shape in Shady Wood, compromise the collaborative effort of putting together a neighborhood plan and sets a dangerous precedent for the city. If the city is working with residents to draft a neighborhood plan, she said, it is only worth approving if it is complete.

“The fact of the matter is we pawned this off on the private sector,” Cnare said. “These days, economics talk, and the city basically washed its hands of this plan.”

Yet if the city is serious about approving developments in tight financial times, Minton said, the process must be flexible.

“We’re not dealing with an ideal world,” he said.