Monona aims high to combat Dane Co housing crisis

Monona aims high to combat Dane Co housing crisis

MONONA, WIS. (EXCERPTS FROM ISTHMUS.COM): New housing in “landlocked” Monona? Hemmed in by Lake Monona and the City of Madison, Monona lacks the cornfields along its borders that are easy for communities to annex, subdivide, and develop.

Madison, Sun Prairie, Middleton and Fitchburg are where 85% of the 16,000 new rental housing units in Dane County were build from 2010 to 2021, according to the April 2024 Dane County Regional Housing Strategy report. Monona accounted for a scant 2%.

But while Monona may be landlocked (and lakelocked), it isn’t airlocked. And now, some city leaders are looking upward for how one small suburb can do its part — and, maybe, much more — to help address the Madison area’s housing needs.

A prominent Madison-based urban planning consultant believes Monona’s time has come.

“I think there is significant potential,” says Vandewalle & Associates principal planner Rob Gottschalk, who has been instrumental in the redevelopment of Madison’s Capitol East corridor into a vibrant residential, recreational, commercial and cultural core. “If [Monona] wants to really optimize that potential for its future, there’s great opportunity there.”

Scott Harrington, the Vandewalle & Associates’ Principal who worked on the complex riverfront plan that spawned The Current in Monona, says the success of that project and Yahara Terrace helped “prove the market” for high-density residential development in the Broadway corridor.

Neil Stechschulte, Monona City Administrator since 2023, says Madison’s Capitol East corridor provides a good model for Monona. Madison was able to reinvigorate those blighted blocks without annexing a single acre of land or paving a single cornfield.

“The isthmus is like a hyper-Monona. They’re landlocked more than anybody, so they have to go up.”

But “East Wash” only happened as a result of a long, careful process of planning and coordination among stakeholders in the governmental, financial and development sectors. Guided by Vandewalle consultants who helped not only create a vision but carry it through to implementation, they looked at the corridor as a whole and made intentional decisions about what should be built where.