Madison College President Jack E. Daniels III announced today that he will recommend a proposal made by local firm Hovde Properties for the redevelopment of the college’s downtown campus after the college moves to its new South Side location in 2019.
The proposal, made jointly between Hovde and Missouri-based hotel developer Drury Southwest, calls for preserving the original part of the building and converting it into a hotel, a ten-story high-class office building, grocery store, retail space, green space and 400 new underground parking spots.
The Hovde proposal is one of five submitted on March 15.
“We have been in full review, you can call it deep dive, for the last month,” Daniels told Madison365. “We have an internal team, plus we use a real estate consultant, and then we brought in a third party consultant.” Daniels said College officials have also met with City officials to ensure the project will adhere to zoning and other regulations.
Daniels said his primary consideration was, “what firm would return the greatest back to us, so that we could meet our mission, serve our communities, start to really address those issues that we know are going to impact training, education, the communities themselves.”
The Hovde proposal, Daniels said, would initially return $750,000 annually to Madison College, and a total of about $200 million over the course of the 50-year ground lease.
The recommendation, to be made formally to the Madison College board of trustees Monday night and voted on May 3, comes after two and a half years of consideration leading to the ultimate decision to vacate the downtown campus, move to the south side, and lease the downtown property for redevelopment rather than sell it.
And the process is far from over: if the board approves Daniels’ recommendation, the proposal must still meet a slew of City approvals and then be approved by the Wisconsin Technical College System board.
“If everything goes well, I anticipate that sometime in 2019, we will complete our vacation from the building, and construction can commence as soon as we do that,” Daniels said.
Daniels said the College will be working on the new South Side location at the same time.
“There’s a lot of happenings on the South side, in terms of where we want to go, where we could go, what are some of the issues that we have to look at, like transportation,” Daniels said. “What the accessibility issues to people that need childcare, all of those elements.”
