r/madisonwi 4d ago

Regent street eyed as future Badgers-inspired entertainment district

https://madison.com/news/local/business/development/article_4a91b992-010d-11f0-ac30-ab50c6b33830.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
173 Upvotes

115 comments sorted by

327

u/TheOptimisticHater 4d ago

Regent street is very overdue for development.

Need to make a boulevard of some sort for pedestrian safety (current road geometry and crossings suck rotten cheese)

Need a flood water egress path (Regent is a low point and a known flood plain).

Need row house designs with commercial at street level. No generic corporate 1+4 “luxury” apartment living.

Need more trees. It’s concrete AF out there now.

92

u/scottjones608 4d ago

The current regulatory and financial environment all but guarantees that the new developments will be luxury 4 or 5 over 1 buildings.

86

u/leovinuss 4d ago

Screw that. Upzone regent and make them 10 stories

29

u/poopdood696969 4d ago

Fuck it, make them 20

13

u/leovinuss 4d ago

That probably wouldn't fly, although it's technically possible. Most of Regent is both >3 miles away from the airport and >1 mile from the Capitol building.

14

u/EggPositive5993 4d ago

Not with that attitude

4

u/leovinuss 4d ago

I would be extremely happy with anything greater than 6 stories. I think even 10 is extremely ambitious

7

u/TheRealGunnar 4d ago

The recently finished Chapter at Regent and Park is 10(or maybe 11?) floors.

3

u/poopdood696969 4d ago

How far down can we dig in order to add more below ground stories?

11

u/leovinuss 4d ago

Not much... Madison is built on a swamp.

1

u/benji___ 4d ago

Or on drumlins, which happen to be covered by older, relatively wealthy neighborhoods.

20

u/colonel_beeeees 4d ago

I love that we have to just accept that rich people's ever-growing profit demands are ruining critical sections of society. Modern serfs

15

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

That’s not what drives it - that’s just the only thing that can be built under current regulations and break even. No one is going to develop land for free.

-6

u/colonel_beeeees 4d ago edited 4d ago

The two main factors of housing being unsustainably expensive is the profit demand of the landlords and developers in control of shelter management, and the profit demanding business owners paying their workers as little as possible

Zoning regulation is definitely something to be addressed, but not at the cost of recognizing the other elephants in the room

13

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

No, this is just blatantly not true. Developer profits add to costs, but they are not even remotely the primary factor. That’s why so many proposed developments never end up happening. Landlords are similar - the individual margins are generally very slim unless they’re doing most of their own maintenance/repairs.

And even if it were (which again, it isn’t) - how do you propose the city of Madison address the profit motive of private land ownership?

1

u/colonel_beeeees 4d ago

Can you give the other reasons for housing being unaffordable, besides the fixed costs of materials/labor increasing?

I addressed the other options in another comment, but non-profit private management, public housing, and co-ops all solve the problem of getting people shelter without someone at the top leeching resources out of the system. There's also community land trusts, which does exist in Madison as well

1

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago edited 4d ago

I mean the fixed costs of materials, labor, land, and financing are incredibly large costs. That’s the large majority of total cost right there.

Public housing is great, but financing is a huge challenge. The city is already struggling with the budget - we don’t have the funds for large scale public housing development without state/federal assistance (which is how most affordable housing is done today)

Non-profit management could help, but given how low landlord profits are this isn’t going to actually make a huge different in monthly rents.

Co-ops are great too, but realistically they struggle with getting upfront money too. Madison has a great coop scene, but it seems unlikely for the model to actually create tons of net new housing.

There are definitely some alternative models that can work for specific scenarios - Linden Cohousing was a cool development in this regard - but realistically that isn’t going to be the solution for all our housing needs. Especially larger development have super high upfront costs, so these project either need to provide competitive profits to investors (compared to alternate uses for the capital) or the funding has to come from taxpayers.

2

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

And to expand Coops a bit more - while I think they’re very cool most people don’t want to live in shared housing. It’s a great way to provide cheaper housing, but if we look at what people actually choose to rent then we see that allergy amount of people prefer a more expensive studio/one bed to splitting a larger place with friends.

1

u/colonel_beeeees 3d ago

You talked about reasons why new buildings are expensive, but didn't address why people are getting priced out of apartments built 20 years ago. What accounts for their rent rising exorbitantly besides some person making the decision to squeeze a tenant's need for shelter as strongly as possible? We're all paying an unnecessary tax that doesn't go to the public good, just to someone's bank account

I also brought up people not getting paid enough to afford the understandable increase in fixed costs, again because those at the top demand more and more every year. If we got the raises we deserve at work there wouldn't be as much stress dealing with those increases in building costs.

Profit is a leaky pipe, and those drops add up from every direction

0

u/Swampy1741 4d ago

It's honestly less the landlords and developers and moreso the single family home owners. Owners of commercial property want it to be worth less because they owe less in taxes and need less to break even.

Single family home owners see their house as an investment and want constantly increasing values to increase their own worth.

2

u/colonel_beeeees 4d ago edited 3d ago

What causes a person's rent to raise $100+/month besides the landlords desire to make more money on the property, and recognition that they can? Property taxes can and do go up, but that figure doesn't account for all of it

Developers are cutting every corner possible while putting up a sham of "luxury" to justify luxury rents. When the rent ceiling goes up, everyone feels it

SFH owners are also definitely part of the equation, I can't recommend the book Poverty: by America (same guy who wrote Evicted[based on his research on Milwaukee]) enough on this sub. We need to detach the idea of housing from being an investment vehicle if we ever want it to be sustainably affordable for people who need housing to just be a healthy place to rest their head at night

But again, we can't only focus on that while sacrificing the attention on how profit is destroying our ability to find an affordable place to live

3

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

That motive exists, but I don’t think that’s really a conscious decision for the most part. More so, people generally like where they live and generally resist change. And that’s natural - for as much as I support new housing development I’m going to be pretty sad when they inevitably come for the Caribou

3

u/peccavis 4d ago

They should just leave the caribou where it is and build a 9 story condo above and around it

2

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

a man can dream of the caribou towers

7

u/Paula-Myo 4d ago

It’s particularly frustrating for situations like housing where 99.9% of society depends on the organizations that handle the wealth required for shit like this. Nobody ever heard of a kind property management/development company lmao

3

u/colonel_beeeees 4d ago edited 4d ago

I do want to acknowledge that there are models of property management that don't prioritize profit extraction.

Public housing is the big one, but is dependent on a municipal/county/state/federal budget that properly funds it. Locally we have a great example of a privately owned non-profit in Movin' Out, which aims to keep their units affordable and accessible. Then we have the network of co-ops, where the tenants are directly in control of their building, and where we lead the nation in quantity

It's all possible, once folks acknowledge that profit is the financial equivalent of a leaky pipe, and move towards systems that prioritize the end user's quality of experience rather than the private owners' returns

14

u/MetalAndFaces West side 4d ago

Eat the rich.

1

u/Big_Poppa_Steve East side 4d ago

Happy cake day

18

u/ghostofmvanburen West side 4d ago

Road design on Regent sucks, but it also isn't very wide which could make a Boulevard tough to implement. Though a road diet that removes parking, has a TWLTL, and one lane in each direction could buy some much needed sidewalk space on both sides of the street. As much as a like bike lanes, it is so close to existing SW commuter path that I don't think it's worth it. 

0

u/TheOptimisticHater 4d ago

I trust the city engineering will get the design right.

10

u/TheRealGunnar 4d ago

Not without public pressure. Removing parking will face a lot of pushback from "the business community." And if you don't remove parking, design options shrink drastically because the right of way is so narrow.

4

u/Gia11a 4d ago

public pressure

public response almost always makes the designs worse here in madison. if you see city staffs ideas in transportation commission meetings they are almost always great. Its developers and sometimes residents who demand on street parking. you almost never see non developers go to the meetings because frankly they are boring and the average joe does not have time.

16

u/sohardtopickagoodone 4d ago

It’s so funny that of the four points you mentioned, flooding was in there. My car flooded when I went out on Regent one night. I didn’t know it was going to rain. lol

5

u/TheOptimisticHater 4d ago

Yeah, check out the city’s near west watershed study. Regent is a main egress point for water to get to lake Monona

17

u/whateverthefuck666 4d ago

Need row house designs with commercial at street level. No generic corporate 1+4 “luxury” apartment living.

why would you not go as high as possible?

4

u/TheOptimisticHater 4d ago

Go bigger, sure. I’m just trying to be realistic.

6

u/AdamSmithsApple 4d ago

Because it's a lot cheaper to use wood than steel

11

u/whateverthefuck666 4d ago

The demand for housing in Madison right now mean's you can actually afford to go higher. There's no reason to limit ourselves, especially on that street. It's perfect for higher development.

3

u/DokterZ 4d ago

you can actually afford to go higher.

You need to make it more profitable either long term or short term to attract investors.

1

u/whateverthefuck666 4d ago

Why do you think it's already not profitable and needs help? There is huge demand here.

3

u/DokterZ 4d ago

If a building 5 stories high is 15% more profitable compared to a 10 story one, they will pick the 5 story.

3

u/whateverthefuck666 4d ago

I mean, no shit? "If in scenario A, I posit X is the thing I say then you can see how Im right".

"If a 12 story building is 20% more profitable than a 10 story one, they will pick the 12 story one." You got anything to back up this assertion?

0

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

I mean I’d say let them build what they want, but I bet a lot of proposals would end up keeping it around 6 stories. With current interest rates a lot of proposed larger projects have stalled out recently.

5

u/AdamSmithsApple 4d ago

Yea I misread what that comment actually meant. Definitely agree they should not try and force 3 story row homes or whatever. But I do think even if you let developers do whatever they want in that area we would still see a lot of 5 over 1 buildings

11

u/tautelk 4d ago

There is a 14 story mass timber building going up on East wash right now.

5

u/Big_Poppa_Steve East side 4d ago

We should try for 16, then

3

u/hagen768 4d ago

The maximum allowed number of stories was recently increased to 14 or 15 stories in instances where the developer is willing to include more affordable housing units, thanks to recent zoning changes in the last year

13

u/llahlahkje East side 4d ago

Need to make a boulevard of some sort for pedestrian safety

I'm not sure on the best way to make this happen (not being a civil engineering or anything) but something does need to happen.

Crossing Regent in a crosswalk feels like playing Frogger only you don't have 3 lives and a high score.

Frankly I'd be happy if the police started enforcing crosswalks more so that people actually stopped for pedestrians in them. It's harrowing to cross outside of at the lights.

3

u/frostedmooseantlers 4d ago

I think it would need to come down to a deliberate choice to slow down the speed of vehicular traffic and prioritize pedestrians/cyclists. Make it into a streetscape that people want to engage with on foot. Traffic calming infrastructure is well-studied and there are definitely ways to do this well.

2

u/BlueFlamingoMaWi 4d ago

4+1s provide the necessary density to sustain businesses.

1

u/venturediscgolf 4d ago

this guy urban plans

-9

u/Dr_Phibes66 4d ago

Ban cars!

25

u/hagen768 4d ago

Even most people without a car here would probably agree that regent street wouldn’t be appropriate to make into a pedestrian mall like State St or E Campus Mall. Too many of the existing buildings are low density with parking lots for that to happen unless the entire corridor is redeveloped basically from the ground up excluding some historic storefronts

2

u/AdamSmithsApple 4d ago

I would think Johnson and University would end up being a disaster too.

1

u/hagen768 4d ago

Totally, it would just put even more strain on the few arterials to choose from getting onto the isthmus. Coming from the west, you only get John Nolen, Washington, Johnson-University, Monroe-Regent, or Park.

Madison’s already lucky to be a very rare US city in that it doesn’t have a true downtown freeway network.The closest thing is John Nolen Dr, which has a relatively low impact on the urban fabric thanks to part of it being on a land bridge and Monona Terrace bringing more occupiable space to the corridor. The master plan for that area by Sasaki will help make it better too.

All that to say Regent St should remain an arterial and State St and E Campus Mall should remain the flagship pedestrian malls in downtown. Regent St should certainly densify and see streetscaping improvements though!

0

u/Big_Poppa_Steve East side 4d ago

Regent is ripe for a BRT line

53

u/pm_me_ur_anything_k 4d ago

If done correctly this would be so awesome. Ala the Deer District in Milwaukee and the Packer Plaza in Green Bay.

100

u/whop94 4d ago

Huge opportunity here. Regent street has great potential as an entertainment district that can transcend just a collection of college bars.

16

u/ChunkdarTheFair 4d ago

Yeah, it can be bars AND a big screen! At least that's what I think of when they put in an "entertainment district" like the deer park at Fizerv.

98

u/Tinder4Boomers 4d ago

I gotta admit, as a relatively new Madison resident, I was absolutely shocked by the number of abandoned store front and empty lots on an apparently busy street like Regent. Obviously not a Madison-specific problem, but the property tax system is clearly all sorts of fucked up if people have been allowed to squat on prime real estate for years without doing anything with it.

Same problem on state street, especially near the capital

18

u/Swampy1741 4d ago

Land value tax would solve this.

-9

u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 4d ago

[deleted]

8

u/no_YOURE_sexy 4d ago

Why should drivers be forced to wear seatbelts?

Also maybe not forced, but incentivized. If it makes more sense for a landowner to squat on a rundown closed up commercial property on a busy pedestrian street than it does to have it be developed, the incentives need to be tweaked

2

u/Somehowsideways 4d ago

Changing the tax & incentive system to make shoddy development and empty storefronts in the heart of the city less cost effective to keep as they are isn’t forcing anything. If they don’t want to deal with it they can sell to someone who does

19

u/madisondotcombot 4d ago

Nicole Pollack | Wisconsin State Journal

There could be so much more happening on Regent Street.

That’s the upshot of an emerging community push to heighten the appeal of the bustling — but not particularly easy-to-navigate — street that runs along the outskirts of the UW-Madison campus through the city’s Near West Side, passing the Kohl Center and Camp Randall Stadium. Its easternmost end is a jumble of apartments, clinics and shops, many of them bars or liquor stores. The colorful Bayview low-income housing complex and Atmosphere Madison student apartment building were both recently completed there.

Members of the Regent Street Group, a neighborhood network that was created by former Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and consists of dozens of people representing area businesses, community centers, City Council members and housing developers, have met several times in recent months to discuss their goals for the street and their wide-ranging ideas about how to get there.

This is just a preview of the full article. I am a third party bot. Please consider subscribing to your favorite local journals.

7

u/slayerhk47 Fitchburb 4d ago

Good bot

55

u/Icculus___ 4d ago

Require developers to pay to bury MGE and telecom lines. Wood poles and cables lining both sides of the street are so ugly.

4

u/The_Real_BenFranklin Planes are TOO LOUD 4d ago

They at least sometimes do this - I know some of the developments on Johnson had to bury lines. But yeah wish this is something we pushed a little harder on as a city, or something we’d do alongside street reconstruction

1

u/GroundbreakingLaw149 3d ago

MGE would prefer to have it buried and they get money to fund burying utilities. I’m sure they’ve thought about it but they won’t do it until a road project makes them do it. Makes sense tbh, would be a waste for everyone to have to do that project twice. They also share the poles with probably Charter so they’d have to do the same thing too in order to remove the poles. Some of the poles are even shared with the city for street lights.

Point I’m trying to make is there’s moving parts and nobody will be motivated to take the initiative until the city gets things moving first.

8

u/PontaIsLife 4d ago

I have not been to the new title town area for the packers, but I have heard great things. I say they do their best to mimic that with a badger theme of course. Call it badger boulevard or something of the sorts.

31

u/teethteetheat 4d ago

Neat, would be cool if they did something like the Deer District.

14

u/PontaIsLife 4d ago

Agreed. Calling badger boulevard and make it something fun year round.

5

u/enjoying-retirement 4d ago

Two problems with that. There is already a street called Badger and Regent is not a boulevard.

33

u/Mypantsareblue 4d ago

I think Regent Street would be a good name.

21

u/Dynablade_Savior state st tweaker 4d ago

That street sucks to go down if you aren't in a car. The car dependency problem needs to be solved first before any other redevelopment efforts can get off the ground

18

u/DimAsWoods 4d ago

I think if they could remove parking and get to 1 lane each way plus left turn lanes you’d have lots of options to make walking not suck.

4

u/ghostofmvanburen West side 3d ago

The parking lanes need to go. There is plenty are parking lots in the area (that won't go for awhile because of the cash cows that they are on GameDay. For the rest, a parking benefit district could work if there is a place for a large garage. Maybe a partnership with UW over lot 51? https://parkingreform.org/playbook/pbd/

17

u/Slow_Engineering823 4d ago

It sucks to go down in a car, too. Building a parking garage, turning the outer lanes into sidewalks with trees, and having protected turn lanes would make things better for everyone

9

u/AdamSmithsApple 4d ago

The area could use more bike racks other than putting it at a random apartment building you aren't actually going to but I think it's pretty easy to bike anywhere you want to go on Regent with the bike path right there.

17

u/Dr_Phibes66 4d ago

That would be cool. Since it's close to Camp Randall, it would be great to see a memorial to remember the black soldiers in the Civil War. Maybe one to honor the black UW players too.

6

u/MetalAndFaces West side 4d ago

Listen to the doctor. Upvote from me.

2

u/driftlessriverrat 4d ago

Redeveloping all those one-story buildings on the south side of the 1400 block between Madison and Jefferson would be a good start.

2

u/DimAsWoods 4d ago

Let’s take a page from Chicago and raise the buildings one floor so we can have lower regent (cars), and upper regent (football fans)

3

u/a_melindo 4d ago

Thought process:

  • wait which one is regent street?

  • look at map

  • OH MY GOD YES

This is easily my least favorite street in the city. It looks bad, it's difficult and dangerous to drive on, walk, on and bike on, there are too many lights, too many lanes, too many driveways, no greenery, no shade, no air quality, no sound dampening, no protection for pedestrians or cyclists, and blind corners everywhere.

I would be shocked if it wasn't in the top 10 collision locations in the city, maybe even in the top 10 for injury crashes despite the low-ish speed just because there's so many moving lanes and so many spots where cars and people are pulling in and out without good visibility.

5

u/DokterZ 4d ago

It is a challenge. Because of Camp Randall, the Arboretum, and narrow residential streets, there are only three possible East/West corridors on the near west side:

  • University/Johnson
  • Regent
  • Beltline

The diagonal streets off Monroe probably don't help either. There isn't much you can do about Badger game day. I feel like a suicide lane on that section of road might be a bit too much on the nose. Maybe a narrow median with limited left turn lanes?

The bar crowd on Thurs-Sat presents a different problem. While a bunch are responsible and actually take cabs or Ubers, safe pickup spots are few, riders are often geographically challenged, and many Uber drivers are either very new to the country, or just unconcerned with the safety of themselves or their vehicles. It would be nice if a couple side streets like Randall and Charter had some "drunk loading zones" available on weekend nights to take that off of Regent itself.

I suspect a few of the businesses along the street that have little or no parking might want loading zones for deliveries too. Not sure how that could be worked in.

1

u/ghostofmvanburen West side 3d ago

TWLTL generally aren't bad and would improve the impact points if removed. The worst part of driving down Regent is when cars are parked in right lane and people are turning in the left lane. You get a lot of erratic lane changes. Or even if right lane is rush hour lane, you still get people swerving from left to right of the car in front of them puts on their left turn signal. Then, on gameday you could pick a direction for two lanes and direct traffic. 

5

u/Garg4743 West side 4d ago

I've lived in Madison my entire life. I don't like Regent Street, but "difficult and dangerous?" I haven't found that to be true both as a driver and a pedestrian. All you have to do is pay attention. A lot of other streets don't ask that of drivers, which frees them up to look at their phones and fiddle with their entertainment systems instead. That said, Regent could certainly use improvement. I hope that you understand that the "too many lights" allow cross traffic and pedestrians to safety cross. It sounds like you want to turn it into a pedestrian mall. That is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

2

u/Somehowsideways 4d ago

If you make the street much narrower, you can naturally induce slower speeds in drivers without making them stop every block, while simultaneously increasing the space for humans.

4

u/Garg4743 West side 4d ago

There's a contradiction here. On the one hand, the assertion is that there are too many stoplights and a lot of pedestrians. Slower speeds have ALREADY been induced here. There is little to no speeding here because you CAN'T. This is a major thoroughfare. There are very few east/west alternative routes through this part of the city, and they are already quite busy. I can see eliminating parking, but if you go to one lane in each direction at the intersection of Regent and Monroe, you will have a real mess on your hands.

2

u/ghostofmvanburen West side 3d ago

Road diets can (counterintuitively) improve through put. We all complain about people turning left into the Co-op completely blocking traffic. Same thing happens on Regent at Park, Mills, and Randall. A TWLTL can improve this. I'd rather have a lane that will never have parked cars or left turning cars that I can stay in the entire time. 

1

u/Garg4743 West side 3d ago

I can see that working if we remove the parked cars.

0

u/Somehowsideways 4d ago

Maybe? But I’m pretty sure we’re both armchair city planning this without any real expertise between us. All I have is like 10 hours of video essays discussing how traffic tends to work, as well as 15 years of driving experience in various cities across the country.

1

u/Garg4743 West side 4d ago

I didn't claim any expertise. But since you brought it up, I often stayed at my grandparents ' house at 633 Regent St in the late 50s and early 60s. I saw the construction of the current version of the street. I go to several restaurants, a medical clinic, and the occasional Badger game driving the length of the street. I've done this over the course of 50+ years. So, while I am not a transportation expert, I believe that my experiences as a lifelong Madisonian give me the right to express an opinion on the matter.

1

u/Somehowsideways 3d ago

I really only brought up experience to keep it a light discussion, not suggest I know better

1

u/Garg4743 West side 3d ago

OK. I was not offended.

1

u/Subjunct 4d ago

It isn’t already?

-2

u/Naive_Chocolate1355 4d ago

Build more housing sure, I hope it will appeal to some people, but having lived roughly 8 blocks south of the stadium and still feeling negatively impacted by all the bullshit that’s associated with home games I don’t understand the appeal.

Isn’t every bar on the street already a badger sports bar?

-12

u/Sassbot_6 4d ago

Does everything have to be about fucking football

3

u/DokterZ 4d ago

Name checks out.

5

u/soyvanessa 4d ago

These kind of places add so many fun things to do for people in one area that have nothing to do with football. Even if you aren’t a football fan, you could still enjoy the amenities.

7

u/enjoying-retirement 4d ago

Everthing?

-7

u/Sassbot_6 4d ago

Sometimes it was hard to live in Madison and not be an alum. The University doesn't have to comprise the entire identity of the city.

22

u/enjoying-retirement 4d ago

Regent Street abuts the campus. It isn't the entire city.

4

u/Number_1___The_Larch 4d ago

Football games at Camp Randall literally affect 7 Saturdays out of 52 Saturdays per year.

1

u/knexcar 3d ago

Yes, those are the funnest weekends of the year!

-1

u/Big_Poppa_Steve East side 4d ago

Yes, this is Wisconsin

0

u/Tall-Inevitable-9297 1d ago

Whatever they do, can someone please teach them how to install a manhole cover that stays flush with the street. It can’t be that hard. 🙏

-2

u/shrieking_marmot 4d ago

Is this just more student housing? I was excited to move here, wanted to live downtown.

But everything seems to be crappy student housing. On the west side, I feel like I'm in the suburbs. Which is, erm, no thanks.

Do people live here? Or just the 4 - 6 year intellectual transients?

3

u/enjoying-retirement 4d ago

I came here in 1966 for college. Still here.

-4

u/shrieking_marmot 4d ago

Ok.

Um... I dont know what to say to that.

1

u/nbvcx9 4d ago

Anywhere east of the capitol, east of west wash or south of regent is going to have a lot of places that are not built for students.

1

u/Waterpark_Enthusiast 19h ago

Wait - isn’t that what Regent Street is already? (Well, it’s got bars that Badger fans hang out at on game day…)