Madison residents debated what Ald. Marsha Rummel, District 6, called one of the Landmarks Commission’s “most divisive and controversial projects” at a meeting Monday.
Steve Brown Apartments requested permits to demolish 121, 123 and 127 W. Gilman St. buildings and construct three apartment buildings. The commission denied the construction request and referred the demolition request to another meeting.
Project developer Shane Fry said the process has been frustrating and spoke about the difficulty of creating a construction plan that is compatible and economically feasible.
“We feel that we’ve worked very, very hard with city staff to get to a project that can be a good project for everyone, including the neighborhood,” Fry said. “We’re at our bare bones.”
Property owner Steve Brown controversially and allegedly intentionally let 127 W. Gilman St. fall into disrepair so the Commission would let him demolish the building, despite being located in a historic district.
City building inspection supervisor Kyle Bunnow said the building has “serious problems” but would likely be in a livable state now if Brown had followed the 1994 recommendations to protect and restore the building.
Chairman Stuart Levitan said he thought the Commission “got it right” with the decision to deny the construction.
“[The proposal] was too big, and obviously there’s a degree of damage by neglect, which we could not condone,” Levitan said.
Levitan also said although the architecture improved throughout the process, the final plans exceeded the size of surrounding buildings by “at best” four or five times.
Ald. Ledell Zellers, District 2, said she also thought the Commission took appropriate action.
“If it were outside of the historic district, I think that people would cheer for it,” Zellers said. “But under 2 percent of our land in the city is in historic districts.”
Madison resident Laura Fabick spoke about remodeling her Gilman Street house into a single-family home, but expressed concern about “being surrounded by buildings allowed to fall into disrepair.”
“This is a project that elicits a lot of emotions,” Fry said. “We, on the development side, have to think very rationally about it. We’re passionate too, but we have to take the emotion out.”
