When Mayor Paul Soglin entered the race for governor, it was a hardly a surprise after months of hinting at the prospect of running.
And for staff running the city’s Department of Planning, Community & Economic Development, accomplishing Soglin’s goals remain at the forefront regardless of his new time commitment.
According to Katie Crawley, deputy mayor of Public Works and Communication, at the top of the mayor’s to-do list is continuing the influx of tech-related jobs as well as building affordable housing.
At the helm of accomplishing those goals are Matt Wachter, manager of Madison’s Office of Real Estate Services and Matthew Mikolajewski, director of the Economic Development Division.
For Wachter, his job is to continue to oversee the addition of 1,000 new units of affordable housing, an initiative that began in 2014 and receives $4.5 million a year in assistance.
“We’re continuing to chug through this project,” he said. “This is about creating a pipeline.”
The additional units would be more than the entire amount of public housing built over the last 20 years, and as of now, the project is on track. Wachter said that the office is beginning its fourth round of projects.
He added that his office’s work is dictated by decisions by the mayor and common council.
“Mayor and common council direct staff to look at solutions for this problem,” he said.
From there, a report is written, council and the mayor approve solutions and funding is allocated in the budget.
“The process never stops,” Wachter said.
Mikolajewski felt similarly, saying that his office follows a work plan for 2018 that was created by the mayor and common council.
“The staff here at the economic development division, we’re focused on the initiatives that the mayor and the council has asked us to work and that really hasn’t changed based on the fact that the mayor is now running,” he said.
One of the most important initiatives is the construction of the Spark, a 158,000 square foot, eight-story building in the Capital East corridor funded largely by American Family Insurance.
The new building will not only be office space for American Family Insurance, but also StartingBlock Madison, an entrepreneurial hub with an emphasis on tech startups.
The city is providing a one-time $1.5 million grant to StartingBlock Madison to assist in building the facility and is also constructing a new parking structure one block over to provide enough parking for the incoming employees.
“That’s a significant investment on the part of the city in providing a piece of public infrastructure that is going to help serve The Spark and StartingBlock Madison which in turn helps supports the entrepreneurial community within that neighborhood,” Mikolajewski said.
Furthermore, he anticipates no change between his office and the mayor’s.
“In addition, obviously, we schedule regular meetings with the mayor to just talk about a specific project if it needs to be a more in-depth discussion and those meetings will continue as well,” he said.
