Hours before a resolution to condemn six properties on West Mifflin Street to build a park came to a vote of the Board of Park Commissioners, a property owner in the neighborhood of the proposed park offered to sell their properties.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said he and co-sponsor of the resolution Madison Mayor Paul Soglin plan to ask the Common Council to delay proceedings on the resolution.
This abrupt halt comes after the Plan Commission and the Board of Estimates cleared the resolution, which would permit the City of Madison to seize six private housing properties for the purposes of a public park.
Prior to this most recent development, the City of Madison’s proceedings toward the use of eminent domain led owners of the buildings in question, which service primarily middle-to low- income UW-Madison students, to voice their objections.
One owner, Patti Coffey, is “glad [the city is] going to try to [take] a more cooperative approach.”
However, even if developments do not ultimately utilize eminent domain, she maintains concerns.
Coffey said she believes the recent proceedings follow a pattern of “gentrification” in areas of university housing.
“Not everyone wants to live in a complex, or can afford to live in a complex,” she said.
Having lived in the Mifflin Street area as an undergraduate, she said that “gentrification is something that university students should pay attention to.”
Verveer, who also lived in the Mifflin Street neighborhood during college, said he harbors “strong affections for the neighborhood.”
“I frankly am trying to strike a happy medium between the pressures of new development and trying to keep the old character, which I personally cherish, of the neighborhood in tact,” he said.
