The Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee viewed the most detailed drawings yet of the proposed development of a new dormitory and office building on Park Street between Regent and Johnson streets at a meeting Monday.
The development is part of a set of projects that will replace Ogg Hall with two smaller dorms-one on Park Street and one on Dayton Street-and supplement UW-Madison's cramped student housing with a 12-story building in place of University Square.
\We think right now we are short 600 to 700 beds for first-year students each year,"" said Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for UW-Madison Facilities Planning and Management.
UW-Madison targets its student housing at first-year students, he said, more than two-thirds of whom live on campus. By their second year, the situation is reversed: about two-thirds of students live in private housing, which serves 22,000 UW-Madison students overall.
The Park Street dorm would house 425 students, the one on Dayton Street would house approximately 600 and the University Square development would account for 770 more first-year students.
Jim Kleinfeldt of Boldt, the construction firm contracted for the project, said Ogg would remain in place until both dorms were finished in summer 2006.
University Square will see a transformation from a one-story commercial center to a development containing two parking levels, two commercial floors and eight floors of space for dorms, offices and student organizations, Fish said.
That development will lag behind Park Street, however, which is intended to be a major entrance to campus. Fish said the development there would put an attractive face on the university.
Next to the dorm, which will sit just south of Johnson Street, the planned building along Regent Street will house a visitor center and offices that may replace the Peterson Building, which will be demolished by late 2006 under the plan.
""This block [of Park Street] has long been very blighted,"" said Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4.
If the development plan passes the committee's next meeting April 26, it will move on to the city planning commission and City Council. Verveer said the council would probably approve the plan, much of which was suggested by city officials.
""We are not going to make a brutal building,"" Fish said. ""It's going to be attractive and clean.\
