💬 Madison mayor answers your questions

🌯 Pasqual’s in Verona, Vintage in Cross Plains Will Both Close

• The Verona location of Pasqual’s Cantina will close March 19 after 23 years in operation, owner Ben Roberts said last week on Instagram. Roberts said the building has been sold and will be soon occupied by “another great local restaurant.” Pasqual’s once had several locations in Dane County, including one at Hilldale, but now only the Middleton restaurant remains.
• Meanwhile, Vintage Brewing Company announced on Instagram that it will close its newest location in Cross Plains on March 29. The brewpub had just opened that spot in September 2024, joining Vintage’s locations on University Avenue, East Washington Avenue, and Whitney Way. [Instagram]

🏫 UW Wants To Build a New Dorm. Or Maybe Not?

• Last month, the Wisconsin Department of Administration sent out a request for proposals to build new student housing on the UW-Madison campus. But within days, the link for the request was broken without explanation.
• The Wisconsin State Journal obtained a copy of the request, which was seeking to build housing for 1,500 to 2,000 students with a 400-seat dining hall. UW-Madison hasn’t built a new dorm since Leopold Hall opened in 2013, and has wanted a new one for years as enrollment has increased.
• State and university officials would not comment on why the request was abruptly rescinded or whether or not it will be reposted. [ 🔒WSJ]

🏗️ Construction Starts on Downtown Workforce Housing

• With affordable housing for downtown workers at a premium, work has started on the 40-unit The Bankston Apartments development on West Mifflin Street.
• SSM Health and Madison Development Corporation have partnered for the project, which targets middle-income workers such as firefighters, health care workers, restaurant workers, and small business owners who are increasingly unable to live downtown as rents increase.
• Thirty of the units will be earmarked for renters making $72,000 or less, which equals 80% of Dane County’s median income of $91,479. The other 10 will be priced at market rates.
• 🎧 Dig deeper: Madison desperately needs more housing, especially for low-income residents, according to executive director of Common Wealth Development, Justice Castañeda. [News 3, City of Madison, City Cast Madison]

Last week, City Cast Madison host Bianca Martin sat down with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway for a wide-ranging 30-minute interview. They talked about everything from affordable housing in Madison to controversy around the city’s absentee voting process to how she would deal with federal immigration enforcement in Madison.

You can hear the entire conversation on today’s episode.

We had a lot of questions for the mayor. But we know you did too! So we put the call out for City Cast Madison readers to send in their questions for the mayor. Here are excerpts from her responses to what was on your mind.

“What can you do to address the affordability crisis? Mayor Mamdani of New York has begun working on freezing rents for stabilized tenants, making bus fare FREE and faster, launching city-owned grocery pilots, expanding childcare, and adding a Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants to name a few things.” – Erika P.

On the housing front, New York has had rent stabilization for a long time. That's illegal in Wisconsin. So that's not a thing that we can do. Madison had the strongest tenant protection laws in the state of Wisconsin once upon a time, and the legislature went and preempted all of them. So it would take an act of the legislature for us to be able to pass more tenant protection ordinances.

In terms of food access, that's something that the city's actually been working on for a really long time. And we do have a dedicated grant program that is around access to healthy food. And we have given grants to multiple small grocery stores. Probably the best example of that is

Luna's Grocery, which now has her second location, and I think a real success story, bringing culturally appropriate food into communities that did not have access to that before.

“East Washington is being well developed for housing around the 3100 block and onward. What are we doing to get walkable, daily-useful businesses such as groceries, hardware stores, and other useful retail in those areas?” – Jen. G.

“What does the mayor in the city do to make sure that interesting cultural institutions can come to the city?” – Lauren B.

“How are you planning to incorporate more green spaces into our city with the multitude of housing and business/retail buildings that you've been pushing?” – Annie L.

Probably the biggest tool we have is our area planning process. It used to be in the city of Madison that we did neighborhood plans, and either your neighborhood had to be low enough income to get a subsidized plan or basically your neighborhood association had to raise money and do a plan yourself. And that's not very equitable.

So we have moved to an area planning process. The areas are bigger than a neighborhood. They encompass multiple neighborhoods, but we have a cycle where in a decade we are going to have a plan for every area of the city. And so nobody gets left out. Everybody has a planning process and everybody gets to express what they want.

People want to be able to walk places, they want to be safe on the streets, we want to have the appropriate kinds of housing and density. And the beauty of a neighborhood planning process is that you can really take a look at sort of geographically, where do those things belong? Where are we missing sidewalks? Where do we need parks?

“What single change to Madison’s infrastructure would the mayor like to make?” – Danny G.

Part of me is like, “Oh you should be super practical and upgrade all the water and sewer pipes immediately, because it costs a lot of money and holds back development.” So that’s one thing. We need to double down on our transit system. We need to get Amtrak here and – can I say this? – have the most kick-ass transit system in the Midwest.