Madison College will purchase the state office building at the corner of Park and Badger, the current home of the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds, and convert it to a south Madison campus that could serve as many as 5,500 students in the years to come. The new campus will open in the autumn of 2019.
Madison College President Jack E. Daniels and Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham also announced a partnership that will allow some Madison students to spend their junior and senior years studying STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) full time at Madison College, earning both a high school diploma and college credit. A pilot program will begin in the 2018-19 school year with 25 students at the Truax Campus on Madison’s east side, with the intent to enroll as many as 200 students at the new South Madison Campus in 2019-20.
“This is a touchstone moment for our community,” Daniels said at a press conference at the college’s current south side location at Villager Mall, less than a block away from the new site.
Daniels said the purchase price for the property will be $2.8 million, and college officials will decide in the next few days whether to renovate the building or raze it and build a new one. Purchase and construction costs will be largely funded by a $10 million donation from the Goodman Foundation and $1.3 million for the American Family Dreams Foundation — the largest single gift of its kind in the foundation’s history.
When the campus opens in 2019, Daniels said it will have about 35,000 square feet and serve 3,000 students — three times as many as the current Villager Mall space can support. Daniels said “Phase 2” will expand the facility to 75,000 square feet, allowing as many as 5,500 students to study there.
Funding for “Phase 2” is not yet secured, but Daniels said fundraising activities are already underway.
“It’s probably in the three-year range,” before phase 2 will be fully underway, Daniels said.
The move to expand the college’s presence in South Madison follows a unanimous but controversial vote by the college’s board of trustees to abandon the nearly 50-year-old downtown facility and lease the property to a real estate developer.
