Packed With Potential
A riverfront park provides access, where there once was none, to the Yahara River
By Carol Cizauskas
Photos: Milwaukee Recreation
Years ago, in the small city of Monona, Wis., the citizens wondered if they could develop a waterfront attraction—given that most of the city’s water access already had been developed. And the city’s neighboring, much larger state capital, Madison, had laid claim to other potential waterfront sites. There was one spot, along the Yahara River, that in Monona connects Lake Monona to Lake Waubesa. But it was an ugly-duckling location, where charming homes looked upon an opposite shore filled with dilapidated buildings, environmental contamination, and nothing to play up the beauty of the river on whose banks the houses perched.
Rendering: Vandewalle & Associates
What ensued over eight years of planning, development, and construction grew into an elegant gem of an urban park. It eventually became a successful public-private cooperative investment and a place that would thrive even under the restrictions of a pandemic, to feed a public hungry for beautiful outdoor access while enjoying enough space and amenities to keep a healthy distance.
Why Build?
In 2012, the city and Community Development Authority began working closely with Vandewalle & Associates, an urban-planning firm based in Madison and in Milwaukee, to turn six underutilized properties next to the Yahara River into a major 8.5-acre space. This project became the largest redevelopment in the city’s history and a significant new landmark.
“We were looking at this blighted property,” says Dean Proctor,Vandewalle principal designer and architect. He and Scott Harrington, principal redevelopment planner, provided the physical design, urban and financial planning, and facilitation of public input and private contributions from developers, construction firms, and architects.
“The city knew they needed development and increment from this site,” Proctor says. “And so it served two purposes. One was to be a gathering place for the community on the riverfront for events and daily activities, as well as adding a valuable amenity to the new redevelopment that would attract a developer and add more value.”
Key goals of the project included:
Creating a year-round community destination and gathering area
Enhancing public accessibility to the waterfront
Increasing property value while maximizing property-tax income and economic value, and eliminating deteriorating buildings, blighting influences, and environmental deficiencies
Diversifying the housing stock while improving conditions in the neighborhood
Remediating the site, adding green space, and improving stormwater management
Assembling the land into functionally adaptable parcels for redevelopment.
The first phase established the marketplace. It involved demolishing existing facilities, remediation, and a mixed-use, approximately $14-million redevelopment project. The new building opened in summer 2019 with 96 rental units and 25,000 square feet of commercial use. The success of the first phase—with near-full residential leasing and a popular restaurant—led to faster implementation of the next phases. Buck & Honey’s restaurant stands on the first and lower dock floors. Filling the building are smaller restaurants, a cigar bar, and offices. From the upper floors, residential units overlook the river and city. Developers also constructed a 92-room Avid Hotel on the site. Finally, the city plans this fall to construct a second apartment structure with an additional 145 units.
The design of this urban development is unique. The park is wider at the street, Proctor says, “and then tapers and funnels in, so it’s meant to draw people in.” They are drawn to the river, which provides a spectacular focus.
The middle section features a green park space with a small parks-department office to the side, “where one can rent skates for ice-skating, one can rent games, and that sort of thing,” Proctor says. “There’s a fire pit in this area and a lawn. That middle space was meant for … passive use of the open space. And the third piece is the river edge [to get] people from the river into the site.”
Parks and Recreation Director Jake Anderson adds that people can get to the park, “by water, by bike, by walking, and by vehicle, with parking.”
Thriving Despite Restrictions
Initial planning began years ago. At that time, no one envisioned an era of COVID-19 restrictions, yet Monona’s riverfront offers ample opportunities to gather safely.
“The great thing about the park,” Anderson says, “is that we can distance out enough.”
Proctor sees Anderson as key to the project’s success because he championed the concept throughout, despite numerous cost objections. “Energetic park and rec directors make a big difference,” Proctor says. “Jake had a clear view and vision for how this park was going to be unique and be an attraction and be a destination.”
Success also comes from the park’s use of the water in a place where access was limited previously.
“The lakes have been very busy with boaters,” Anderson says, ”so we’re getting a lot of traffic coming down the Yahara River, some people stopping in, docking up to the pier. The movable furniture with our Adirondack chairs and our café tables have been great as far as distancing. People can spread themselves out along with some of our fixed tables and chairs that we have, as well, in the park.”
Buck & Honey’s has continued service during these restricted times.
“Because of the patios and having all that overflow dining,” the restaurant’s owner Tom Anderson says, “we’re able to create an environment where people can come out and feel comfortable.”
In addition, boaters can phone in or use the online app to order a meal. “It will be done in 20 minutes, and we’ll bring it right to your boat,” he says. “It’s basically more seating for us and [keeps] the social-distancing guidelines that we wouldn’t have had before. The boats are like tables.”
The middle part of the park includes a slightly raised stage and lower platform for activities, where the parks department offers exercise classes that reopened in early June.
But, along with the success of the riverfront development, pandemic restrictions also have limited the activities.
“We had a really ambitious schedule for this year,” park director Anderson says. “A lot of activities that we would anticipate drawing 200 to 400 people in that place. We’re going to scale back quite a bit at this point and focus on the fitness aspect, the ability to sit and enjoy a book, maybe have some check-out opportunities for some yard games.”
Photo: Courtesy of Vandewalle & Associates
Overcoming Challenges
The site posed a complex set of unique problems for the design and project-management teams, including the mid-size scale, parking requirements and aesthetics, designing a riverfront for all users, environmental obstacles, and budget concerns.
Park director Anderson pointed to the complexity of “working with a private development and a consultant and an engineer and multiple interested parties in trying to come up with this public-private project that is trying to meet the expectations of a lot of people.”
Hiring an experienced planning firm helped the city reach the end of the maze. The project’s medium size proved one of the highest hurdles—a scale too large for a single, smaller developer, yet without enough massing potential for the largest developers. To create the right fit, the team met with a number of developers, 13 times in all, to find the combination that worked.
Additionally, both the project’s design and its financial success were tied to accommodating sufficient parking without detracting from the aesthetics of the site or its public open space.
“For the retail and all the housing we were putting in,” Proctor says, “we needed a lot of parking. There was an inherent plus in that the street was higher than the river level, about a story difference.”
The solution required digging an underground parking level lower than the river with a surface lot above. This plan required extra reinforcement of the surface lot and creative building design that screened the exposed side of the underground lot from the public space.
Early on, the location was determined to be crucial for boosting the value of the property by providing the city’s only public access to the river.
This amenity also challenged the planners, however. “It’s right on the river,” Proctor says. “There were a few times when the river got really high right after this thing was built. I was cringing as the river got higher and higher within a few inches of the plaza level.
His advice? “Just be smart about how it’s going to weather and be impacted by such things as a nearby creek.”
In addition, designers were challenged to make the space feel open to the public while serving three buildings, and offering the option to section it off for special events. Developers built a kayak and canoe launch and transient boating slips for use by residents, visitors, and restaurant patrons. Other uses for this public space include small events, music, exercise classes, ice skating, and a fire pit. The site uses integrated seating and steps into the water.
With so much offered, one might think the development used a lot of land. Not true.
“This was unique in that it was a really tight space,” Anderson says. “Very narrow, 80 feet wide maybe, a little over half an acre. Keep an open mind that maybe what you typically think about as a park may not happen here.”
On top of its being a small space, “there’s a lot of realities that you’re dealing with,” Proctor says. “A major utility, a major street, setbacks, the amount of parking that’s needed, the development footprint. And so what ended up happening was all those needs kept pushing the development a little further to the north, and the public space became a little smaller, a little smaller. The development impacted the size of the public space.”
Additionally, a brownfield parcel on the site required remediation prior to redevelopment. And then, to meet the city’s environmental sustainability goals, design-team members planned creative stormwater management. Rain gardens integrated into parking and public spaces detain and filter runoff before it reaches the river.
And not insignificantly, the project cost a lot of money, according to Anderson.
The entire project, including the city’s outlays, cost an estimated $65 million.
But building the park as a tax-increment financing project, Proctor says, “was definitely part of the attraction for the developer. It’s been so successful that they’re already … planning on and designing a whole second phase of residential around the park.”
The city looks forward to a 400-percent increase in assessed value. “How many millions of dollars that is,” Proctor says, “and what kind of tax increment [the city is] going to get for that—I’m sure they’re paying for the park.”
At the grand opening last fall, resident Billy Nolter agreed. “They did a beautiful job. They took all these properties that were under-assessed or under-developed, older, and they re-purposed this whole thing. They turned it into a wonderful tax base for the city for years to come, and it’s going to help sustain everything.”
In the end, Anderson says, “The amount of meetings and planning sessions, and then when I have to defend the overall cost of a project, and then going through some of the public scrutiny of ‘Ugh, that seems like a lot,’ or ‘I don’t know if we can afford it,’—to then the oohs and the aahs of people enjoying it—to me is always the reward of what we do.”
Carol Cizauskas is an Assistant for Vandewalle & Associates. Reach her at ccizauskas@vandewalle.com.
Susan Hansen, Principal/Marketing Communications & Positioning leader for Vandewalle & Associates contributed to this article.