State mum on choice for Hill Farms project

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A top Walker administration official said Wednesday that the state has selected a team to rebuild the Hill Farms building on Madison’s west side.

But Mike Huebsch, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, said he cannot announce the names of the companies involved at least for a few weeks, citing a variety of legal constraints and a desire to protect the state’s interests. During the week of Dec. 15, a specially chosen selection committee was to have interviewed representatives of four development teams that had responded to a request for proposals issued this past year for the Hill Farms project.

According to the proposal, the state was to have a letter of intent with the selected development executed by Dec. 31. Repeated attempts to learn which group had been chosen were unsuccessful leading into Wednesday.

At the Building Commission‘s meeting, Huebsch said the selection committee had picked a team and he had approved the choice. Still, he said, he could not make a formal announcement for a few weeks, saying he was legally prevented from revealing details about the tentative deal.

Huebsch also said releasing information pertaining to the proposed contract could harm both the state’s and the developers’ interests.

“When it comes within the next few weeks that we will get to the point where we award, sign the contract,” he said, “there will be clarity and transparency as we get to those milestones.”

The four development teams selected as possible candidates to build a replacement of the Hill Farms building consist of:

• Chicago-based developer McCaffery Interests Inc.; Chicago-based architectural firm Antunovich Associates; Plunkett Raysich Architects LLP, Milwaukee; Vandewalle & Associates Inc., Madison; Ken Saiki Design Inc., Madison; C.G. Schmidt Inc., Milwaukee; and W.E. O’Neil Construction Co., Chicago.
• M.A. Mortenson Co., Minneapolis; developer Wangard Partners Inc., Milwaukee; and Eppstein Uhen Architects Inc., Milwaukee.
• Smith Gilbane, a Wisconsin-based joint venture between Fond du Lac-based C.D. Smith Construction Inc. and Providence, R.I-based Gilbane; Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc., Minneapolis; and architecture and engineering firm SmithGroup JJR LLC, Detroit.
• T. Wall Enterprises LLC, Middleton; Potter Lawson Inc., Madison; and Miron Construction Co. Inc., Neenah.

The state has requested that whichever team is chosen to build the 600,000-square-foot replacement of WisDOT’s headquarters also buy the Badger Road Office Building, which houses the Department of Employee Trust Funds on Madison’s south side, and any unused land and buildings at the 21-acre Hills Farm site.

Huebsch said the new building will only need between 7 and 8 acres of the site. The developers have been asked to propose uses for the rest of the land. Huebsch said he is interested in finding a way to preserve the community gardens that have been planted at the site.

The existing WisDOT building contains 368,100 square feet of space. The replacement building would house several agencies in addition to WisDOT, including the Department of Financial Institutions, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and the Department of Administration. Follow @TDR_WLJDan