🎒 They’r-r-r-e back! (UW students, that is)

🚗 New Traffic Pattern For John Nolen Drive: Starting on Sept. 1, southbound traffic on Broom Street will not be able to turn left onto John Nolen Drive as part of the latest phase of the reconstruction project. That left turn will be closed until spring 2027. [City of Madison]

🏈 UW Opens $285M Indoor Athletic Center: Featuring a 120-yard indoor football field, sports medicine areas, and training and conditioning facilities, the new Kellner Family Athletic Center opened this week on the UW-Madison campus.

• Construction on the second phase of the athletic center and on a new engineering building means fans should expect to take a little extra time getting to Camp Randall for of the six Badger home games this fall, beginning with the Sept. 12 game against the Western Illinois Leathernecks. Most notably, pedestrians will not be able to walk to the stadium under the Memorial Arch. [WMTV, 🔒Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

🏫 New Position Connects Centro Hispano and Madison Schools: A new joint position between Centro Hispano and MMSD aims to strengthen Latino students’ sense of belonging, identity, and academic success in school. Arturo Ambriz is Centro Hispano’s new associate director of family, youth, and community engagement.

• Dig deeper: Centro Hispano executive director Karen Menendez Coller came on the podcast last year to talk about her organization’s work, and how Madison’s Latino community shouldn’t be treated as a monolith. [Cap Times, 🎧City Cast Madison]

🎒Welcome, New and Returning UW-Madison Students! No offense, but we are not going anywhere near campus this weekend while you move into the residence halls Aug. 29-31. [UW-Madison]

📚Remembering Dolly, One Free Book at a Time: Along with being a country music icon, Dolly Parton was a dedicated philanthropist, including giving hundreds of millions of free books to kids through her Imagination Library project. Madison Reading Project was the local partner for the endeavor in Dane and Sauk counties, and Sarah Burke is on the City Cast Madison podcast today talking about running the partnership and Dolly’s legacy.

• Also on the pod, local entrepreneur and former Alder Scott Resnick talks with host Bianca Martin about executive producer Hayley Sperling about the mayor’s race heating up. Plus, Hayley digs out the most important moments in a city meeting about how the Corey Ruiz encampment was handled, and, in our members-only segment, should Madison students go back to pen and paper? [Madison Reading Project, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

Meet Ivy! She’s 2.5 years old and a rescue who is supposed to be 51% Great Pyrenees but is mostly a goofball. Every morning, she makes a sound that roughly translates to “I wuv you.” Her people wish that everybody could have an Ivy kind of day. Us too 😍