Heritage Preservation Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, no.

You're getting us on a rowdy night. Yeah. Alright. It's 6PM, Thursday, August 28. I'll call to order this meeting of the Heritage Preservation Commission.

We have all members here present in person except for two. Natalie Hennigan is on maternity leave, will be returning, and we just learned very tragically that Bruce Baines passed away. And so we, I guess, are sort of shocked by that news. So he is, of course, here, but not here in person. So with that, the first order of business is the approval of the July twenty twenty four twenty excuse me.

Twenty four twenty twenty five meeting minutes. Is Is there any discussion on those minutes? If not, I need a motion to approve. I move to approve the minutes as written. Motion to approve the minutes as written by Laura Gaudin. Second by?

I'll second Jim Gallagher.

Second by Jim Gallagher. Any discussion? Alright. Motion on the floor is to approve. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Being none, that passes unanimously. On to our agenda item, we have 25 dash one zero three five. This is presentations by Heather Bailey, preservation planner in the city of Madison, and Tim Askin, senior planner, city of Milwaukee on the demolition delay ordinances.

Yeah. Both of those presentations are attached to the legislation. But I wanna first just say welcome, and thank you so much to both of our speakers. We are some of us have been following your ordinances for some time, and we're very excited to have you all present tonight to talk about these existing ordinances and see how we may be able to include that in the city of La Crosse. So, Tim Acklin, would you like to say anything before they get started?

Just to reiterate that thank you very much for taking the time this evening to attend our meeting and to talk about this. This has been, something I have flirted around with over the past several years. And ever since too, I had seen a presentation by Heather, several years ago at a statewide preservation conference.

In La

In it

was in La Crosse, I believe. Yeah. And, understanding at least her perspective on what would be needed to get it done, and I thought it was fairly tough, but that was years ago, different elected officials at the time. But just from the loss of buildings that we have had over the last several years and even over the last several months, there's just been this desire to sort of kind of understand more about what this is, sort of reignite the discussion with all of you. And then there's also been some council members that have been also asking about something like this as well.

And so I just figured it was time for us to have this conversation again about what this is and what how it works in other cities and then maybe how that could work here and what we need to do. So Yeah.

And if I can, one one thing, you know, since some of us are familiar with demolition delays, some are not at all. So Heather, city of Madison, I think, will be going first. Heather, if you could just state what a demolition delay ordinance is. Okay.

Mhmm. Yeah. And just

layperson's terms because it's sort of a new concept in for many people in historic preservation. And we're gonna hold questions till the end of each presentation. Cool. And, yeah, we'll take it from there. Go ahead, Heather.

Sure. So thank you so much for inviting us to participate in your meeting tonight. Demolition delay is

a

legally vetted process across the country that many historic preservation commissions and or municipal governments in general have implemented as a way to make sure that we are being thoughtful about how we're going about reshaping our cities. Not every building is historic. Some buildings are just old. And as we are looking at how our community grows and evolves, sometimes it's good to slow down, pump the brakes a little bit, and get a feel for, is this the way that we want our city to be reshaped? There is a lot of room between keep it exactly as it is and totally scrape up and pop it up something new.

There's a lot of different things that can happen in there, but the do nothing option and scrape it and do something totally new, those are, to a certain extent, the easier options because that realm in between requires a lot of creativity. Demolition delays are a method that a lot of cities have implemented so that they can have the time to gather together the information for, is this something that we want to demolish? Do we want to keep it? If we keep it, do we want to designate it as a local landmark? So a lot of different options there. Does that well, you said we'll hold questions to the end, but does that explain for everybody?

Yes.

Okay. Then Thank

you.

If you are okay, I will go ahead and attempt to share my screen. Share. Okay. So while demolition delays is the way that most places are doing this, and again, said that's legally vetted, so that's a good solid basis. That's not really the way Madison does it because Madison is different.

We we do things in peculiar ways. So here's the way this has evolved in Madison. In 1983, we implemented in our zoning code two things that are linked together that then became problematic, and we tried to delink them. One was that we wanted a process that all demolitions of principal structures, so your sort of main building, not accessory structures like garages, all demolitions of principal structures would have to be approved by plan commissions. So not even talking about landmarks commission, by plan commission.

And the reason why they implemented that was they were seeing with a lot of other cities where buildings were coming down, and then nothing was happening. And so they were worried about, and we certainly have quite a few places that were a legacy of this where buildings came down and then they were a surface parking lot or nothing, and that it was leaving a lot of missing teeth in downtown, and they didn't want to have that to be the look of our city. These missing teeth properties then also led to a sense of blight. But we also implemented a process for what is up there as alternative use. It's now our conditional use standards.

Later on, so you see in 2009, we were getting feedback from our city attorney's office that while both the conditional use approvals for something that would have to go to plant commission for a conditional use approval and the approval for demolition, while we had been linking those, that that was legally problematic, and we needed to separate and decide conditional uses on their own merits and decide the demolitions also on their own merits to deny the demolition of a conditional use just because they didn't like the conditional use. You need to base that on the conditional use standards, not on these demolition standards. But when we did the update in 2009, we largely left the demolition requirements really sort of the way they had been. But a lot of the things that were in the demolition requirements were things that weren't really requirements. They were descriptive and also things that were required elsewhere, like that you have to have a recycling plan.

Well, that's required elsewhere in the Madison general ordinances. So that's whether it's in the demolition standard or not, it's still required. You have to oh, I don't know. There are several different standards that are involved there with that they're already required in other parts. So why do we have that's more just sort of descriptive and reiterating stuff.

And they weren't review standards or standards of approval for deciding whether this should be something we save or not. And in 2013, we finally updated our overall zoning code. We've been operating from a zoning code from the nineteen sixties up till that point, and it was very suburban. And so we had, well, a lot of conditional uses coming through, but also a whole lot of planned developments. There wasn't stuff going through with standard zoning because the standard zoning, particularly in downtown, was very suburban in nature, and so it didn't fit into downtown.

But most stuff happening was in downtown. So we had planned developments, planned unit developments everywhere, and we're like, okay. Well, essentially, we're doing conditional zoning and creating our own zoning for every single property, and that's bad for everybody. And so we finally updated with a new zoning code, and we created this demo subcommittee for, okay, let's formalize and integrate this process and see if this is still the way we wanna go about it. More recently, we've had some updates, and part of that is that there's a an entirely different feel in Madison.

Madison has a lot of development pressures, and that's good. People are reinvesting in our city, but it also comes with some stresses as things are changing. So there was a push from a few different alders for, hey. How can we streamline this demolition process? But also as they were getting in and looking at the demolition standards, they're like, some of these things aren't even standards. Why why are we even talking about this? And what it came down to was really, the main reason to deny a demolition was, does this property have historic value? Is this something that we want to keep as part of the history of what it means to be Madison? Do we wanna keep it as part of the vernacular context of our cityscape? What do we wanna do here?

There are plenty of places with the demolition delays. What they do is essentially a designated or lose it. And did we wanna do it that way? That gets to be a little problematic for us politically problematic for us. For all that Tim Askin will tell you, they do that absolutely in Milwaukee, and that would be a nuclear option in Madison.

So politically, just very different situation. As we were going through and looking at updating the process, one of the things was that having this really micromanage approach of plan commission approving every demolition of a principal structure in the city, that we were growing to a point where this is getting to be unmanageable. Also, though, the way we had formalized the process was that all of these properties went to the Madison Landmarks Commission for their advisory recommendation on historic value of the property with the proposed demolition to advise the plant commission because that's not plant commission purview as thinking about history stuff. That's Landmarks Commission. So they got a report and a review from the preservation planner.

I provide a report to the Landmarks Commission. Landmarks Commission then is the body tasked with being the stewards for cultural resources in Madison. So they provide that feedback to the plant commission, then plant commission can weigh a variety of things and decide, is this something that we want to keep? Do we want to require some type of mitigation? How do we wanna go with this?

Or do we just say, yeah. That's a regrettable loss and it's sad, and it goes So in looking at ways to streamline the process, we were finding that a lot of properties Landmark's Commission was doing a finding of no known historic value, meaning take it down. That's fine. But for the way the application process went, you still had to apply the plan commission, which I think our application deadlines are, like, six to eight weeks ahead of any given meeting. That's a long time for somebody who just wants to take down their building and pop up something new, particularly when it's what I formally and professionally like to call a nothing burger.

So is this really a good use of our time? We've gone through and we've tweaked some things, and so our most recent update in January was to implement a an administrative process. So let me switch to the next slide. And there's links in here if you want to read through the legislation on any of these, if that is something of interest to you. Okay.

So how we used to do it. So it used to be, again, land commission approved demolition of all principal structures in the city, not even ones with historic designation, all principal structures. So we've got this little flowchart for all of them come to Landmarks Commission. Landmarks Commission says yes or no, but they all went to plant commission. And then after the plant commission review, we could plant commission could say no, and sometimes they they do.

And so the demolition isn't issued, or sometimes they say yes, and then, you know, there's other things that might go with that. Here's our breakdown for when we did we crunched the numbers based off of the way the ordinance was working since we had implemented the previous sort of update in 2021. In that period of time, we had a 144 demolitions in the city, and 79%, Lambert's Commission was saying no known historic value. But even with Lambert's Commission saying no known historic value, they still had to then wait to get to plan commission, which this stuff was then these demos were approved on the consented notice. Nobody even talked about them.

Again, they were nothing burgers. Why do we have this six to eight week time period for people to be able to take down a building? For a demolition delay, that makes sense where you deal with it at your historic preservation commission, you know, cool. But then after that, why do we have this period of time? So we created, well, so the middle of the road ones are the ones that I say is regrettable loss, and then I call the other ones, the big findings that really I we're recommending, this is super historic, and we need to be careful about this, and maybe talk about ways that we save it, be it what we designated or some other means.

Oh, let's get into before I get to the new process. So examples of no known historic value. So these are some actual demo reviews that have come before Lambert's Commission. So this building here on the left, not architecturally significant, no known historic associations. Scraping this and popping up something new? Fine. This building over on Femright Drive, it's an old building, but it's not a historic building. Architecturally, it's had a lot of things happen to it. There were no known historic associations. There's still there's there are great examples of this style of architecture all over the city.

This isn't the building to necessarily save and for redevelopment of the site. So Lambert's Commission made a finding of, like, yeah, you know, we're we're sad. It's an old building, but there's nothing architecturally significant. No known historic associations. And so they made a finding of no known historic value.

For examples of properties with known historic value, so I've got little notations here. So four things that have come through. This property here on the far left was at 223 West Gilman. This was the Chabad House, and it's at the very edge of the Mansion Hill National Register Historic District. I've got a Mansion Hill Local Historic District that does not have the same boundaries as the Mansion Hill National Register District.

That's super confusing. But for one of our standard bits of language is properties that are designated in the national register, they've gone through that process, and the city and our certified local government capacity has commented on the national register designations. And so we are supportive of these as historic properties for all that they're not ones that have the local historic property protections. But we still wanna be careful about how we're going about approving demolitions of properties that are designated in the National Register. The finding here was that well, so the language commission did their finding of this is a contributing resource.

Well, the building on the right, the the the addition and all that on the left, less so, were contributing to a national register district. Plan Commission said this property has already evolved a great deal. It is at the edge of this national register district, and at that edge, it already has a lot of missing teeth and that it isn't going to devalue or implode that national register district. So plan commission approved the demolition of this property. The property there in the middle, 2121 Jefferson Street, Lambert's Commission did a finding of historic value.

It's contributing to a National Register District. This was over by Inglewood, and so contributing to the National Register District. But it's right in the middle, and it's it's got history associated with it related to the nun that used to lead the education there at ed Edgewood. And so they said planning commission agreed this this has historic value. It's right in the middle of this National Register District.

And, no, we do not think that the the condition of the buildings were just fine. They were the applicants were trying to make an argument of, like, oh, this is so bad. But then people also provided information about how they were advertising to rent this property and talking about all the updates that had been made to it and how great it was. So that that didn't really fly either for saying, oh, no. It needs too many updates.

They'd already done the updates. So the plan commission denied it and said, no. We value historic resources. There's no reason to take down this building that's in the middle of this Nashville Register District. The building on the right was so it's State Street was officially determined to be eligible to the National Register of Historic Places in the nineties, but it wasn't officially designated in the National National Register.

So for federal compliance purposes, it's treated as if it's designated, but for all other things, it isn't. So this was the Mifflin Street Arcade, and it was right behind where the new State History Museum is going up. And the proposal came in for to take it down, and Lambert's commission did a finding to say that this has historic value as contributing to the officially eligible State Street National Register District, but also called out the things that made it distinct. And so from this up high view, it's kind of hard to see. It's it was an arcade building.

It has this really well, had this really great terracotta detail across the front of it. And so they called out the, like, here's the things that are architecturally significant, and here's the architect who did it, and made a recommendation for if this comes down, and as a single story, very not cared for building at that point, just not even a full block off of the Capital Square, this is probably a place where, as a city, we would like to see more development. So Plan Commission approved it, but made a requirement as the demo for the demolition that they had to do architectural salvage. So that process allowed for the city to require mitigation. So they had to do documentation and do the architectural salvage for possible reuse in a future structure.

There are some challenges on that, and I don't know where Hubdea has the stash now, but they did the architectural salvage, and so the terracotta blocks that were a part of this facade are someplace. And maybe when they redevelop it, we'll see them again. I don't know. We do have some that have actually, as part of the mitigation, reincorporated some of the pieces when they do a reconstruction or come up with something new. Okay.

So how we do it now? Everything still goes to Landmark's commission, and I think this is important, and this is what you see with demolition delays as well. If we're gonna talk about the reason why we wanna pump the brakes on this is is this something that we want to keep in some capacity, be it as it is or some type of adaptive reuse or creative plan, we need to stop and think about what is the history here, and do we think this is something that is of value to our community? So all of these still go to Landmark's commission. And I have had some feedback from some elders that are like, you know, you you know what you're doing.

That's nice to hear. You know what you're doing, and you have access to the research. If you know that this is gonna be a known known historic value, why do we have this come to Landmark's commission? Because even though so my deadlines are four weeks ahead of a Landmark's commission meeting. If you know ahead of time that this is gonna be a known known historic value, why don't you just approve that administratively and only send the ones to Landmark's commission that you think something might be going on?

And I said, absolutely not. For one thing, I I don't want that burden necessarily on myself for being the person who needs to catch everything. Having a public process allows for the community to come in and provide information that might not be in the documentary record. Particularly for underrepresented and marginalized communities, they're not gonna show up in the archival record. That's part of the marginalization process, is they're not in the documentary record.

So there might be an amazing history that we didn't catch through an architectural or thematic survey in the past. And so I don't have it documented anywhere, and just because I don't have it, that doesn't mean it doesn't have historic value. So having a public meeting, so having it at the Lamersk Commission, where people can come in, word we it's a public meeting, so the word goes out about the meeting and what properties are up for demolition. If somebody comes in with a, hey. Did you know this is super significant because x y z happened?

We say, no. We did not know that, and then that's information we can plan pass on to plant commission if that process is there. If we take that opportunity away, that's where stuff can fall through the cracks. And once we issue that race permit, it's done. And we can't say, oh, we just found out that this was super significant. Too late. We've issued the race permit. It's legal. They get to do their thing. So they all still go to Landmark's Commission.

The vast majority are still no known historic value, but for the ones that Landmark's Commission says no known historic value, nobody's come in with something, those now go to an administrative process, and so it very quickly moves along to a raise permit. For the ones where both the middle of the road, regrettable loss, and the know this has historic value when you talk about this, both of those go to plan commission, and they wanted both levels because they wanted to talk about possible mitigation, and maybe this reshapes the way folks are wanting to do their projects. But they also need to do it in a way that doesn't link it into the conditional use standards. Needs to stand on its own, so it's still a little complicated. Okay.

So we developed an application form for under our new process for how things go. And so there's both parts here. You can find these on our website, you know, maybe because municipal websites aren't always the easiest to navigate through. But we've got the first part. This is all the stuff that zoning needs for talking through what it is you need to do. So there's you need to complete the application form. Yes. Please do that. We have a demolition list serve, and people sign up people who want to know about demos in the city. You do this notification, and so it goes out on this listserv, and so this email goes out.

And that's one of the methods of notification. So you need to submit to the demolition listserv that you're gonna you're proposing to take this building down, so that goes out. You need to do this pre application notification to the alder, the neighborhood association, if there's a business association, and we've got several all over the city. Send something to them. So, again, this is providing different ways for notification. We have a $600 demolition application fee, but there's some complications with that as well. Your demolition plan, how are you going about this? These are things that they need just for, like, moving towards a raise permit. But then the part two is the stuff that Landmark's commission needs. So what are you doing?

What is your timeline? What are the dates of construction? Now it might be easier for me to pull that up by going through the archival records from building inspection. But what's the history that you know about this existing condition photos? Because that is super helpful for just when people are making a case for, oh, this is a deteriorated beyond repair.

Is it? And so having those pictures can be helpful. Also, though, as part of the state required compliance for properties that are that have a historic designation, so this is usually coming with properties that are listed in the National Register but don't have a local historic designation. If the city approves the demolition, then we need to send documentation to the state. So there's already a built in a little bit of a demolition delay at a state level for thirty days, where you need to send them documentation and ask if they need additional documentation.

By the city requiring this photographic exterior and interior documentation, already have that. And so if we've got something where a plant commission approves the demolition, I forward those photos over to the state, and they usually say, that's adequate documentation. We don't need anything more, and moves on. Yeah. So information about will the existing structure be relocated? We really love talking about relocating buildings, but lately, it's been messy. But, you know, there's always the possibility of, hey. This is a great building, and we're going to move it someplace else where somebody will love it. And then we added in a final thing of just giving people a heads up of, hey. If Commission finds there some type of historic value, this is going to have to go to Plant Commission, so just heads up.

Although, again, we've been doing this that way since the eighties, so it should come as a surprise to folks. Okay. So for motions at Landmark's Commission, we also have because I'm trying to keep predictability in this process, so people aren't surprised when something comes up. These are our standard boilerplate motions for Landmark's Commission, and then I added in this a, b, and c language, or making it a part of the motions. Because sometimes previously people would say, well, is this a B finding or a C finding?

Because Landmark's Commission would talk about, well, has historic value related to yada yada yada. So are they saying they're middle of the road regrettable loss? Are they saying their big finding of, hey, this has historic value? So we're being very specific with we are making a motion for b, that it has historic value related to a very accurate context, but the building itself is not historically, or architecturally, or culturally significant. So we're putting in essentially, is saying, we don't think this should become a landmark, but maybe this is something we need to think about, and maybe talk about some mitigation, or also think about we're starting to lose a lot more of these, and we perhaps want to plan for maybe some historic designations or thinking about preservation planning purposes.

So here's our standard motions. That is now included in the ordinance. It was just in the Lambert's Commission policy manual, which, again, you could find, but you kind of have to already know where it is. So all that stuff is out there so that property owners or developers, when they're getting into this, they know what the possible motions are. That also lets people know if you have a property that is in a National Register District, Lambert's Commission is going to make its big finding.

That's not going to be a surprise. So if you what I tell people when they go to plan commission with a property where there's going to be a finding of historic value, and I know heads up, this is gonna be a finding of historic value, I tell them when plan commission asks you, how are you addressing a historic value? Have an answer. And it could be, well, we're, you know, keeping the front part of this building. So the original Gardner's Bakery building that's a couple blocks off square going down East Wash, one of the mass timber things is happening there.

And the front portion of the building was the older and the prettier. And then over time, as Gardner Bakery grew, they had a much larger, very plain architecturally, whatever building in the back. They took that off. They popped up their big mass timber new thing, but they kept the front portion. And so that was their mitigation, and it's got, like, a little bit of the, you know, ghost sign on the side.

So when they showed it to planning commission with a, yes, we know that there's historic value here, and we agree, and this is how we're addressing the historic value. We're keeping this portion, and we're integrating it in. Have an answer. So this has been really helpful for streamlining the process for proposing mitigation, so it's not just a lot of hand wringing once it shows up at Plan Commission. Why have a public meeting for all demos?

Like I said before, not all history is documented. Some of our survey stuff was done in the eighties. A whole bunch of stuff was done in the eighties, and we haven't been able to get back to resurveying these areas. A lot of history has happened since the eighties, which makes me very sad, because parts of my life are now part of history. So not all this history is documented there. We don't necessarily have all the information. Let's make sure that we aren't getting into something where we're making decisions that we then regret. Let's make sense about this. But, yeah, as I said, once you issue that raise permit, you can't claw it back. It's it's legal.

They can move forward. I need to go back and find where this was. There was some place out east where the city had, you know, not done a demolition delay, and there wasn't any kind of public process. And so the city issued an approval to demo a building, and it hadn't been designated. And it was a house for one of the signers of the declaration of independence. But once that came out, people were like, oh, no. We need to go save that building. It was already half demoed. And the city said, well, no. The race permit's been issued. We can't claw that back. It it's coming down. And so people are like, oh, we wish we known. Yes. But you didn't do this public process to have that information.

And I'm really encouraged by the amount of creative mitigation that Madison is now doing with the way we've reshaped the demo process. So that's how we do it in Madison, but I don't know of any other place that does it this way. I expect demolition delays and that type of process to be something that happens at a historic preservation commission, not at the plan commission level. So that's been very encouraging that Madison still continues to do a process in that way. Any questions for the ways that we do it?

Absolutely. Questions from the body. Tim, do wanna start?

No. You guys first.

I have one, and I think you you answered it later on. The question was, what triggers review of a demo permit? And you answered it. You said all demo permits are reviewed by the Landmarks Commission. But what I'm hearing is that the Landmarks Commission is an advisory body, not a decision making body in Madison. For these?

So yes and no. Demos for all principal structures in the city go through this process. Properties with a local historic designation still need an approval. So they still need a certificate of approval Yeah. From the Madison Landmark's Commission. And that's not just for principal structures. That's for anything. So garages, if you're in a local historic district or a landmark property, Landmark's commission has to issue the COA for that to come down. But in addition to Landmark's process, you still have to go through the formal demo process. And so on Landmark's commission agendas, when we have that where somebody's taking down a building, they will will have the certificate of appropriateness review, and then Mhmm.

We've got a separate portion at the end of a Landmark's Commission agenda that's the historic value reviews, and so that's the advisory part. So Landmark's Commission, as part of their findings, will, for the historic value thing, for what they're communicating to plant commissions, say that they found that it had no known historic value, or if it did, that, you know, it's mitigated in this shape or form, and that we've issued our approval for it to come down for the properties that have local historic designation. But otherwise, demolitions for principal structures, not for garages or anything like that, so not accessory structures. All principal structures in the city have to go through this historic value process and have to get officially an approval from plan commission. But now, like I said, about 79% of those are being approved administratively on behalf of plan commission.

Okay. And so how do you all define I heard it a little bit, but sometimes a a place will define a historic thing as something that's over a certain age. Yep. Fifty years. So it sounds like that's not the case here.

No. So it's just I've seen plenty of demolition delays where they'll say, properties constructed, and sometimes they have a, like, hard date, which is unfortunate. Like, you know, constructed after, let's say, '19 before 1950 have to have but then, you know, history continues to happen. So some do a, you know, 50 years old, or 40 years old, or something like that, and then you're sort of mapping it out. We don't do it that way in Madison, in part because for our historic preservation ordinance, we don't have a time range for historic properties.

You have to make a case for why it meets the standards for designation, but we don't have a time threshold. So it could be something brand new. I think you'd have difficulty making a successful case for why it is historically significant and should be a landmark. But no, we don't have a time thing. A lot of places do, and I think that's probably a reasonable way to go, but we don't do that.

Okay. And then I have two more questions, if that's okay, just on this. So I'll ask them both at the same time if that's okay. The first one is, do you get pushback from other departments? And two, do you find it sort of sounds like this, but do you find that more building owners or whatever are less inclined to go straight to demo because there's this process?

Well, I mean, I think you saw we're still having lots of buildings come down. So Yeah. No. I think it is making people slow down and come in with a plan as opposed to a, like, oh, we don't know. Let's just take it down. What are you doing? So I think it's implemented some thoughtfulness on that front as opposed to, well, we'll take it down, and then we'll just call it a spec property of you've got this vacant property and you do something with it. So I think it's creating a system where people can be more deliberate. But because we've, in some shape or form, been doing this since the eighties, there's also a lot of inertia with this. This is the way we've been doing it.

So I'm not necessarily seeing a whole lot of pushback. There's people who push back. I mean, we're talking about land use types of situations. People are gonna push back, But it's not it's not a surprise. When most of the property owners I'm dealing with, when we're going towards something where we know it's gonna be a historic value situation, I meet with them ahead of time.

We pre app, and we talk through some possibilities for mitigation. I want people to be coming into this with eyes wide open. I don't want it to be a surprise. My job is to help try to preserve when we can, but it's also to help people with the planning process. And so I'm there to be supportive, not just be a dragon with my hoard of we're keeping everything, and this is the way it is, to talk through the what are some things that we could do here?

And so we've had some wonderful creative mitigation. There was oh, it's the first block on Regent Street right as you're headed well, coming off of Park Street. There was this sort of last remaining block. Everything else around it had been redevelopment, but this last remaining block of what had been a commercial area for the Greenbush neighborhood, but it was out of context and the buildings various whatever. And so we said, come in to plan commission with something to talk about the historic value and how you're addressing it.

And so what they did was on their own, the developer went out and did oral histories with folks for what was it that you loved about this, and do you and talk with folks in the neighborhood, and do you have picture and so they created this interpretive display in the lobby area. And so I drive past it, and and you can see it. So hopefully, I get stopped in traffic so I can take a look through there. But they did this story to talk about the history of the Greenbush neighborhood and the Italian heritage for the different businesses that had been there. And I think that's a super successful creative mitigation for these buildings that were falling apart, and this was an area that really was starting to become its own kind of missing tooth with all the other development that had popped up around it.

Mhmm. So they were happy to do that creative mitigation plan commission. Love that they had an answer and that they were talking about doing this project, and then they did it. So the folks there are folks who are looking at some creativity and willing to jump on that. I've got a couple of folks who they they wanna do what they wanna do, and they don't wanna play ball. And but yeah.

Those people exist. Yes.

Those people exist. That is part

of it. Thank you, Heather. Other question. Sure. Go ahead.

I'm not sure if I can word this the way I'm intending to, but how does the process itself deal with when when I hear it, I I hear the potential for subjectivity

Mhmm.

In determining what is has historic value. I mean

Yeah.

If you ask 10 people, you're gonna get 10 different answers. How do you deal with the the relative activity of what is historic and what is not?

We had that as part of our discussion with commission, actually, because we we did lots of meetings before we ever went and implemented the most recent update on the demolition orders. And that was a question that actually came from some of the alders to say, like, this seems really subjective, and how can we make it more objective and, again, more predictable? And I said, we can't. That this is a subjective process and that that isn't necessarily a bad thing. We don't wanna be arbitrary and capricious.

There needs to be a process for how we go about deciding, does this have historic value? Lambert's commission does that when we do historic designations and when we do comments on national register nominations as part of our duties as a certified local government or commenting on section one zero six undertakings, again, as a stakeholder defined for because us being a CLG. So it is subjective, but that is also part of why we have this. It's about what we are defining as what is it do we want to value as a city? That's the whole reason why we have a Historic Preservation Commission.

What is it that we value as a city that we want to continue to integrate into our identity for what makes this place Madison, and what tells our stories? So yes, there is some subjectivity. We do want some subjectivity there, because it's a process for determining what it is that we value, and whose stories we're telling. But to avoid the arbitrary and capricious for, well, we like your history, we don't like your history, We have some established processes for why something has historic value. Now legally, for how we are making sure that we are going about this in a deliberate and careful way, is Landmark's Commission does the review, And when they make their finding of historic value, they don't just say, we think it has historic value, period.

They say, we think it has historic value because and then they need to cite some type of finding for why they think it has historic value. And that thought process is then there on the record, and so then it's part of the legally supported finding for why it has historic value. And so Lambert's question also needs to make a case for why this has historic value. We've got our standard boilerplate findings, so it could be this has historic value because it's contributing to a National Register District, or this has historic value because this is where Elvis broke up a fight on East Washington. That actually happened, we don't have a historic designation for where that happened.

That that's a popular story that comes around in Madison a lot. Or this has historic value because it's a work of a noted architect, Edward Tough. We're taking down a lot of Edward Tough's buildings lately. This is a building by noted Madison architect Edward Tough, and it's distinctive for and so they'll say their things. One of with us having creative mitigation by Landmark's commission making detailed findings, they're also saying why it is historic, and so sometimes then that is what plan commission uses to have a discussion about mitigation.

Because what is it that is significant? Oh, it's the architecture. It's got this amazing terracotta tile. Well, we think that this property needs to be redeveloped for what we're envisioning for how the city is growing, but we agree that these elements are important. So we want you to do some selective salvage and talk about integrating it so that we have a bridge between these pieces of the past and as we're growing into the future.

Did you have a follow-up, John?

I just had an I just had an idea, but I don't know if it applies to Heather or not. Okay. I'm just thinking down the road here, maybe a point system for each historic value, almost like a rubric. And the higher score you get, the more likely the builder would be to say something like that. That's what it just hit me. I don't know if that's a good idea or not.

Sure.

Something to make it less subjective. I'm worried about subjectivity in law, and I'm also worried about money in making final decision too because developers have more money than the people defending the buildings a lot of times.

Mhmm. Okay. Other other questions before we move on to our next presenter? Can always ask Heather more questions as well.

I have

I have one or two, but I just wanted to ask guys to go first. Please. So, Heather, when you say historic value, when you determine the historic value, when you if you determine that it does have historic value, does that also potentially mean that it's eligible for being listed in the local as a local landmark as well? Or have you found something that has historic value but may not necessarily be eligible to be listed as a local man landmark, or do they go hand in hand?

They don't necessarily go in hand in hand, but sometimes they do. They're actually two buildings that Plan Commission approved for demolition. One Landmark Commission said, we think this has historic value, and we think it should be a designated landmark. And a nomination came in. It was a really great nomination.

And Landmark's commission said this meets the standards for being a landmark. So both the landmark designation and well, that plan commission, I can't remember if plan commission approved it or not. But, anyway, there was an an appeal and set of approvals related to the demolition and the redevelopment of the property that were at common council as the same night as the landmark designation. And so they put they did placed on file without prejudice for the landmark designation and approved the demolition and redevelopment. So it didn't happen, so the landmark designation didn't happen.

There was another one where I was recommending in my staff report, I recommended the property be a regrettable loss and do that middle of the road finding, and Lambert's commission was like, no. We think this is an amazing building, and it's got a great history and architecturally significant, and they talked through the reasons why, and did an additional finding of that they believed that this should come in for landmark designation. And it went to Planning Commission, and Planning Commission made a conditional approval that the applicant do their this is very fuzzy. Do their due diligence to explore possible relocation of the property, and they attempt they put it out, somebody said that they would do it, they were in way over their head, it didn't happen, and it recently came down. So it is therefore not coming in for landmark designation.

My so there you go.

Have you so have you had a lot of my other thought of it too was have you seen the pressure on larger developers, big name developers, or local institutions? Like, I was just wondering the fallout. To me, I feel like in the political aspect of this is they have pref you know, they I don't know. They carry more weight when it comes to these things. And so you kinda see they're building this historic value, but, oh, it's it's this entity that's doing this, and they're expanding. And there's 400 jobs now getting created as a result of it that that is the unfortunate. I mean, that's

Yep.

Did you see that happen as well too? I mean, I'm sure that happens even just without the demo process. But

Well, I mean, sure. And so part of us having this separated out where Landmark's commission is only dealing with the historic value. So Yeah. That's that's their purview. And so that's just what they're commenting on. The, well, this will bring in x number of jobs, or this will, you know, reshape this blighted property or whatever. That's not their purview. That's not what they do. So they are just dealing with historic value. So when folks show up to try to argue for this, I'm like, okay.

Well, thank you for that, but Landmark's commission is only talking about the history of the property, and that's something Landmark's commission knows how to do. That's what they do with most of their meetings. So they deal with what is within their purview. Now at plan commission, plan commission has a much wider purview to balance a variety of interests for the city and decide what is it of these competing interests that we want to move forward with. And so this can be part of what they consider, but it's not all of what they consider.

So is there pressure for yeah. Absolutely. But that isn't necessarily really any different from any process where it's going to be approved at Plant Commission, particularly with the development pressures that we've got going on. But, also, that is what plant commission does. It yes. It can be tense. Yes. It can we can have some uncomfortable conversations. There's a lot of pressure there, but there's a lot of pressure there for a variety of other reasons as well. This is just then part of the larger equation.

My last one then is, what pieces were you grateful for that are in place that were needed for this to work? Like, I don't know if it needed to be, like, you needed the elected officials on board with it or or you needed to the clear criteria that we have. I don't know what those were. I didn't wanna, like, give a nudge in certain ways. I just meant, but, like, what what have you seen? Like, I'm grateful that these pieces in place of this process are in place for this to work effectively. Like, what has that been that we would need to consider as a city, as a commission?

In part, I am grateful that I inherited a process that had been in place since the eighties, because it's been there, and we've had it. And now that we have this control, letting it go, it is hard for anybody. Moving plan commission towards doing more administrative approval and not have stuff come before them, giving up that control has been hard because you because the people who serve on the plant commission, just like the people who serve on historic preservation commissions, they're doing this work because they love the place where they live, and they want to be of service and make sure that they're doing the right thing for their community. So letting some of that control go, hoping that everything will be okay, it's hard. So I am grateful that we have such a wide purview because we've had it for almost fifty years at this point.

So awesome. For the other stuff, the more recent updates, I wanted things to be more clear about aligning things with more professional standards for how historic preservation works and how we actually evaluate for historic value, because evaluating for historic value is what I do administratively for things that come in under section one zero six review for the comments that I'm providing to projects with a federal nexus. So there's already a standardized process that is well vetted there. Let's make sure that we're doing that with the way we're doing these types of historic value reviews for stuff that the city's doing. I really also appreciate having the separate reviews and discussions, one at Landmarks Commission, one at Plan Commission, because they've got different jurisdictions and different things that they're taking into consideration.

So we can just talk about historic value and do the process related to the way you evaluate these types of things in historic preservation world and not deal with the competing public interest. Because, again, that's not something that Landmark's commission does, but that is absolutely something that Planning Commission does. So I think having these separate processes at Lambert's I love being a bureaucrat. I think these processes are what makes these places work. So I know the bureaucratic process.

It makes sure that we are being deliberate how we are proceeding, and we're not necessarily having big surprises. So I appreciate that we have that Landmark's Commission isn't just dealing with the whole thing. They're dealing with one part of it, and then it goes on to Planning Commission, and they deal with weighing the other interests because that's what they do.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you, Heather. There may be more questions

after I'll be here.

But we we really appreciate. That was excellent. Alright. Tim, the other Tim. Hello. Welcome. We're excited to hear from you as well. Obviously, Madison and Milwaukee have a lot of differences, and so this will be very interesting.

Yeah. Development pressure, politics, size, all very different, but I will say that Milwaukee has a more traditional prep what what has what Heather was calling a more traditional process for this, and I will get started. Alright. Keep in mind my, Zoom background because that's gonna come up in a moment. And, so is the publisher of of this panorama from the eighteen nineties.

So to do the to do this story, we kinda have to do a history lesson of lessons learned. Milwaukee has gone through various layers of preserving things, starting with the landmarks commission in 1964, the first municipal, preservation adjacent adjacent body in the state. I say adjacent because they couldn't really do anything. But this is why we started the landmarks commission. The loss of the Chicago And Northwestern Depot on the lakefront or a freeway.

Unlike some other things, other projects that have happened over the years, at least the freeway was actually built.

Yeah.

So we started the Landmark's Commission in '64 in response to this demolition. It was an advisory body. They did not really have any powers whatsoever. They barely had a budget. It was just, boom. We should start investigating whether certain buildings are worth savings and occasionally meet on that topic. Yep. They did that. Didn't last very, very long. The disasters from urban renewal kept coming and coming.

1967, the next big disaster. Both the blessed version of Pompeii in the third war also lost for a freeway, but, this was a freeway simultaneous with urban renewal that, basically wiped out all the residential area, for this parish's members on top of it. However, even with, dealing with urban renewal, the Italian community was absolutely irate over the loss of this building once again for a freeway. Landmarks Commission rebrands, reorganizes, puts this church into their logo. And on top of putting a church in their logo, they take up a Latin bible quote as their motto.

Remove not the ancient landmark in English, from the King James version. They got some modest powers over after this. They got, they got a budget. They're able to organize, meet buildings, do loans and grants, negotiate with property owners. Preservation becomes a formal city policy, but all designations are just honorary.

They help coordinate some mitigation, like, stuff sometimes. They can't really do they do they do issue a plaque to everyone, a plaque that is a nightmare. All the plaques are my nightmare to this day because every not everything they land landmark is actually protected under the current ordinance. So people assume if they have a land plaque, they're protected, whereas 90% of the stuff that's protected doesn't actually have a plaque. So don't give out plaques for anything that isn't designated.

It's a nightmare. 1982, in response to, preservation disaster number three of nineteen eighty courtesy of Marquette University and the Knights of Columbus. I should also throw some blame at the hands of the Landmark Commission, but, technically, it's Marquette that did the dirty deed. The Elizabeth Blankenship. That's brutal.

We still have let's see. Some of the fireplaces are have been turned into bars at the Paps Theater. Some of the architectural savages, public art and housing authority buildings, Some stuff is still in storage. So long and the short of it is Knights of Columbus, get out, decided they're done with it. Redevelopment Authority acquires it, sells it to Marquette promising a clean site.

It never ends up being a clean site under city's under the city's hand. Gets to the point where, pressure is building this. Political pressure is building to save it, and public pressure is building to save it. Market hits it with a bulldozer, the weekend before the next common council meeting. If there's anything local politicians don't like, it's and runs around their own authority and shenanigans like this.

You try to undercut them. That's how you get a preservation ordinance. I will go into the how this ended. So this comes down, sits vacant for ten years before Marquette builds anything. And when they finally build it, oh, gee.

They had 10 feet to spare. The the the site is still grass today. Man. It was rough. So that's how we got to, the second we, created the preservation commission and abolished the landmarks commission, we gave ourselves demolition delay powers.

Currents current ordinance has this has this opening statement, cleared by our public policy, the protection enhancement, perpetuation, and use of improvements of special architectural character or special historical interest or is a or value as a public necessity and is required in the interest of health, prosperity, safety, and welfare of the people. I doubt that's been tweaked too much, but since 1982, but it works. Could use some more modern language, but messing with your preservation ordinance when it not, just for, nice language and not always opening the can of worms out of, we're playing we're changing the ordinance. What can't what else can we change? Mhmm.

Mhmm. So Heather covered some some of this. The thirty day state law delay for national register listed buildings, they do mean contributing garages as too. They're very serious about that. And this is where you can kind of view blame the state and use that to great effect.

Sometimes people just refuse to take the pictures. I sat on a garage permit for thirteen months. It was not even a garage worth saving once I got the pictures. But the owner refused to give us pictures, and we sat on it. So as a current practice is literally every demo permit in the city goes, get gets my sign off personally.

It's not really an administrative review so much as a, as a last minute. Oh, do we really wanna lose this one? So that being said, I can't really start anything. I have to go running to the older person or call up, our friends at the various preservation nonprofits or neighborhood associations and say, you run over here with an application for a demo delay right now. Okay.

It usually is not actually that urgent. So I have heard that this is kind of a weird thing, but every demolition of a primary structure in the city of Milwaukee is held for sixteen days after legal notice publication in the newspaper of record. And it I'd say very specifically, after publication, 75% of our demo permits are incomplete at filing. 75%. And they don't get published until they're complete.

So you can end up with a lot of time despite it sounding like you only get 16. Certain commercial properties get held for thirty days. That seems to be an internal policy. I've never found the exact ordinance language, but sixteen days is very specifically in the ordinance. We can waive that if, if the building is under 50 years of age and, the preservation signs off, staff signs off as nonhistoric value.

I haven't done one of those waivers since, like, 2019. Used to be, like, two a year. Now it's been, like, seriously six years without a single one. Don't know what's going on. People, I guess, are willing to wait.

It's not a big deal. It does run into some kinks sometime. I I had to refuse a demo waiver on a Jiffy Lube once because it was technically a remodeled 1930 service station. So we have our automatic delay of at least sixteen days. In that time period, any member of the public or the older person who is technically a member of the public, anyone but, anyone but me can file an application to have preservation commission review the property and see if it has historic value.

We hold a hearing within twenty days of that application, and that delay can go up to a hundred eighty days, or it can be permanent if the designation, if the preservation commission recommends permanent designation at and the common council agrees. This The other side of this is, from Google and Lithographic who, published that lovely, panorama of the city and did lots of famous lipid rafts all throughout the country in Downtown Milwaukee. They said they had they said they had a developer ready. They said they had plans to build. Yeah.

Still, it's still vacant thirty five years later. It was this gorgeous architect designed castle like building. That led to another change in our preservation ordinance. We now can conditionally approve demolition at either the preservation commission level or the common council level level on absolute, vetted, verified proof of 100% financing ready to go and complete construction plans. Doesn't happen that often because usually we just say no.

There haven't there have not been many cases where it's like, okay. I guess we can live with losing it if you're really building something better. Last time this happened, developer changed tax anyway in the building's edge. So and now for a recent case study, Central City Plaza. Right here is shall we say the the most the second most interesting and the most in disrepair and the one that it's a three building complex.

This is the one that triggered it. One of our, preservation commission, members was particularly offended that we we were trying to save, save, quote, a failed liquor store that lasted less than four years. But that was just one piece of the story. Mhmm. What did we know on this?

So to be able to do anything, I go run up to the all alderwoman's office and ask, what are your thoughts on this? Are you thinking it's worth studying? I don't always do that, but, also, I have a weird relationship with that older person, and it's kinda touchy. So try to always stay on her good side and keep, keep her involved on things she knows. So I get her I get get her verbal blessing.

She says, yeah. Go go ahead and find someone to nominate and whatnot. We let's go through the process. This has some history. So not only do our nonprofit partners file the designation, they go on a media blitz.

And, well, I don't wanna speak too too poorly of Salvation Army shelter design, but I am gonna say the original buildings are, more architecturally inspiring. So what do we know when this comes in? We know it's we know it was kind of a black shopping mall. We know it was one of Alonzo Robinson's architect Alonzo Robinson's biggest commercial commissions. UWM UW Milwaukee just recently got gotten a federal, underrepresented communities grant to do a catalog of his work and career.

So we knew that not much more. They didn't even have a draft document out of time, but we had a general idea. Who was Alonzo Robinson? The first licensed black architect in the state of Wisconsin. Did really great work for his community, worked for decades at for the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, built lots of public buildings, built lots of churches, built lots of stuff for the black community, basically, at cost.

He did not He felt it was his mission to serve his community, and he gave them great work. Where do we go from here? Well, we know it's him. Yeah. It's probably worth worth saving on that alone.

We had no idea. This was a completely black run urban renewal effort. This comes into the research phase of it. So, weirdly, this was the least opposed, urban renewal effort in the history of the city of Milwaukee for scraping a site clean. It was really only about three blocks of what they thought were dump dumpy buildings.

I would argue to save them these days, but it is what it is. No one was particularly offended. They weren't in great repair. It comes down. Redevelopment Authority, dedicates this one block to a commercial development. They get no bids. They get no bids. They get no bids. The owner of the black newspaper comes in and submits a bid for a concept similar to this. It evolves, later. He underbids. No. He underbids again. No. He underbids a third time.

Oh god. There's really no takers. Fine. What do they do? They get the community together to basically do September crowdfunding, get the community invest, and people who already pushed out about River renewal in the neighborhood to invest in this.

And go to the SBA, get the massive new loan program for, minor, black communities in particular to do commercial developments, get some funding from the the city, and hire, basically, the only black architect available because, of course, this is the, black one project. Everyone involved was black, the developer, the architect, and all business owners inside. 14 new black owned businesses came in here. Black owned businesses were 1% of less than one percent of the businesses in Wisconsin in 1970 when this happened. Less than 1%.

So one new development creating 14 new businesses, bowling alley, pharmacy, grocery store, liquor store, motel, office space. Several of the most prominent black attorneys in town moved into the offices basically upon opening. We actually have a photo of a window sign for one of those attorneys, and his son is on the common council these days. I must say I also teased him with that to help, sell him at the common council that it seems like, hey. It's your dad's office.

Isn't this lovely? Never be afraid to suck up to your older persons when when you need to. But I think you would have voted for it anyway. Anyway, this is also probably our best surviving example of neo formalist architecture in the city and probably the own and the only multi building complex that we're aware of. Usually, it's public buildings and a lot of, anchor store anchor department stores at shopping malls come up in this style.

Most of them have had this remodel off of them, but a lot of the stores back in the day did, did hapless. So black run development, black operate development, black design development. And just as kind of a side here, The street lights and the pay and the pavement and the parking lot striping are still intact to this perspective design.

Yeah. The building's still open.

So what is demolition delay by us? Yeah. This is an amazing case study in it working. Within a couple of months through playing out the process, Salvation Army started very offended at the beginning of the process and did a 100% pivot after, hearing from the common council, hearing from the preservation commission, hearing from the black community. They're like, we didn't know but, like, almost apoplectic with their apologies. We didn't know. We're gonna redesign. We'll do an addition. Fine. This is great.

We wanna do a museum exhibit in the new addition. Let's keep this. Mhmm.

So all those buildings are still there or just the one?

It's three buildings. They're all still there. No construction has started, but most importantly, no demolition has occurred.

Cool. That's awesome.

This is this is kind of the iconic building of the of the three. This one was never actually under threat, but you need, you kinda need to see it.

Pretty awesome.

So that is that. Questions?

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Questions for Tim.

So if I heard the process correctly, a demo permit all demo permits go across you first. Yep. And for for sixteen days. Right? Yeah. And then you know you publicly notice it. Now that's as long as the application is complete. And so during that sixteen days, somebody then can request, going back to Heather Heather's term, request that a assessment of historic value is Yes. Needs to be done by the Landmarks Commission. Now if that doesn't occur in the sixteen days, then you have to grant grant the permit. Is that right?

Yep. I mean, 99% more than 99% of these, I don't refer to anyone. I just click click approve demolition approved in our permit management software and get along get on with my day. It is not the burden you think it is. Even at city of Milwaukee size doing literally every demo permit myself, it takes me maybe twenty minutes a week. Wow.

But then

the ones that you feel like, okay. We do need to take a look at this. You sort of connect with other organizations to help advocate for something that gets

For the most part and very specifically to preservation staff, we are not allowed to submit designations. Right. Right. But the thing is I do see literally every demo permit, and I have people I can call.

Mhmm.

Right. And if it's in the right older manic district, yeah, the older person will just sign off on it themselves. But, like, nope. We need to evaluate this. Prepare an application and bring it to my signature.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Tim, do

you have when you're looking at some of these demolition requests, do they submit a picture of the property as well, or you have to look it up and and see what it looks like? And then are there things that you look at within the property like, oh, this this is a design that could be of importance or, you know, things of that nature?

Yes. I I do not have any super specific criteria for this other than for most things, I'll check the AHI just to see if there's anything. Most of the time, it's like, oh, this is a decrepit ranch house. Bye. Or, oh, that was a nasty fire.

Bye. We do have a very different economic environment than Madison. There I do have to say there are times I've said to myself, oh, I wish I could save this, but not not gonna happen in that neighborhood. Not a chance. There's just like, there's been a couple, burned out shelves where it's like, all the walls were completely intact. It's like, oh, move that a mile, and we could save it. But, no, not there. No one's gonna invest the money.

John, did

you have a question?

So is there a cost to call for the public hearing if somebody or is that just, anyone can do that?

Any city resident, $25.

So there is a cost.

And then Yeah. You get,

an amount of superfluous hearings, or is that rare? People not just for not good cause.

No. Basically, not basically, nothing superfluous. Back in, like, the nineties, the common council insisted on having a fee for it. We kept it we were able to get them to keep it pretty minimal. Does jump come in? No. Does a we did just get one that isn't technically demo, but the building just have a fire on the neighbors are being proactive. Is it a little iffy? Yeah. Is it worthless?

No. It might but, to use Madison's language, it's probably in the, regrettable loss category. If it were came across my desk, would I would I flag it? Or do I wanna pick a battle and have a fight for this one? No. But someone did it without our prompting? Yeah. We'll go with the pros go through the process. It's not it's not a worthless building. It's it's at least interesting. Mhmm.

Do you have the same process that, salvaging some of the items from the hall from the building, like, in Madison?

We do not technically have the power to require that, and our, architectural salvage slash building recycling deconstruction ordinance did not get very far, so we don't really do that here.

I have a question just on that. Tim, I know that sounds like that ordinance didn't go very far for Milwaukee, but what about Madison? Sometimes I wonder if, like, demolition delay, in a way, disincentivizing den disincentivizing demolition, at least making it not quite so easy. Do you see an uptick of reuse or even ordinances in deconstruction reuse?

We do not have a deconstruction ordinance. I I wish that we did. I'm a little surprised with how sustainably sustainability focused we are that we don't have a deconstruction ordinance. We do require, as part of demolition, for people to submit their recycling and reuse plan, but there's no requirements on what that recycling and reuse is. You just have to submit a plan.

So Sure. Yeah. So what ends up happening for most properties is well so, I mean, there's requirements related to how you're doing stuff or sending it to the landfill. And that's just you're just writing out exactly how you're doing it. For recycling and reuse, a lot of times they reach out to Habitat for Habitat to come through and see, is there anything that you want? And a lot of times, the answer is no. Unless it's something new, Habitat mostly isn't wanting it. We do have a wonderful local business called Deconstruction Inc, which if you're ever in Madison, they're open Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Please go check it out. It's super cool.

And so they'll go in for the architecturally prettier buildings. They'll go in and do some so sometimes the creative mitigation is recommending that they explore architectural salvage, and the only shop in town that is doing that is Deconstruction Inc. Mhmm. And so sometimes people do that, and that's a great way of getting some for properties with local historic designation when they're looking for materials for some things, Sometimes deconstruction has it. But we don't have other than a requirement that you submit a recycling reuse plan, we don't have specifics about what you need. You just have to submit a plan.

Yeah. Does city of Madison use the Dane County landfill? I don't know. Okay. Curious.

Okay. Very, very interesting. I sort of anticipate deconstruction ordinances coming along more and more, especially with demolition delays. I'm always sort of curious, like, what comes first.

Yeah. And being loosely familiar with that, any of the folks who any of the municipalities that do a deconstruction ordinance, they talk about that you need to set up the whole environment for Right. Rather than just being like, you must do it. Okay. Well, there needs to be some kind of infrastructure for that. And that tends to be the place that stalls folks out because creating that circular economy, you gotta have instead of just being like, here's this requirement. Figure it out. Oh, there's no options for me. Yeah. So it's it's a bit of a heavy lift. But once you get it going, again, you get that inertia happening, and it just kinda cycles on its own, and that's great. But getting it started is a challenge.

I've noticed that places that have deconstruction ordinances and are doing it well have long been doing c and d recycling, construction, demolition recycling. So and that's in itself, like, a big bit of infrastructure to to get up and going that a lot of local governments don't have capacity to do.

I will say, the more publicized side of Milwaukee's failure was trouble with the infrastructure and retail environment. We were, there was a long standing construction training neighborhood organization who works with ex cons. And, you know, who who doesn't care if an ex con is on their job site? Someone who's tearing down their tearing down their house. So that is, like, the perfect way to get, it is was the perfect way to get ex cons in the construction trades because no no one's worried about what they're gonna do to build building.

It's coming down anyway. But the bigger problem was state state laws on, retail and handling of lead and asbestos materials, that's what really killed us. I'm not the person to ask about that, but, really, to be able to do that, we're gonna we would need significant legal changes from the state legislature for deconstruction ordinances to be viable in the state.

Yeah. For sure. Great point. Mhmm. Other any other questions?

Well, this was phenomenal. I really appreciate you both being with us tonight here. We've been like Tim mentioned, thinking about demolition delay for a really long time, it seems like a big thing to to consider, but, certainly, thinking through it in this way really, really helped. We we, you know, have had even just recent examples of very historically relevant buildings being demolished just because we want a big house there or want that parking lot or something like that. So we see it more and more, and so it's helpful to think through the ways that LaCrosse might be able to implement something like this.

I will say can I say one thing to that? Some of this can be addressed by just in the zoning code by just making it really difficult to have, principal use surface parking.

Mhmm.

That is something that just

turns out we're in zoning reform, aren't we?

Yeah. That is something that is something we do have in place, but it's just like, well, good. Sure. We can't we can't stop you from tearing it down. We have no interest from tear stopping you from tearing it down, But we are going to find the wooden daylights out of you if you try to make it up a service parking lot.

Mhmm. It really deems intimidating.

Well and I think something that's important with talking about these processes is that it's not antidevelopment, and it's not about stopping development. It is making sure that we are being thoughtful with how we go about it. So, like, Tim's last example, that didn't stop Salvation Army from redeveloping redeveloping the site. It did change the way that took shape. So they were able to integrate some new things, but also keep that link to the past, and they integrated it all into the site.

So there's still a successful project. It allowed for some space for the city to collaborate with the developer, and they ended up coming up with a great project. So it's not anti development. It is thoughtful development.

Mhmm. Yeah.

I love the of that, for sure. Excellent. Well, we'll certainly be in touch, I assume, as we sort of work through this, and we really, really appreciate both of you being here tonight.

Thank you so much for inviting us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, both of you. Appreciate it.

Take care. Bye bye. Excellent. That was fantastic. Thank you so much, Tim, for inviting both of them to very different places, to very different ordinances, it seems like in ways. And, certainly, like, our body is even a little bit, you know, different in ways too. So next steps, I guess we

Well, since we don't really have quorum now, I'm thinking next month, we can

Discuss.

Discuss more Mhmm. About how we wanna proceed and what we think might be the issues and concerns and what components we think might work and not work Yep. As we move towards

Something.

To try and draft something. Mhmm. I can also like, I'll have this video done, and I can send it to Natalie.

Yep. She'll love to review this.

And it'll and then the remaining part of it can be viewed by Laura and Jim as well, and then we can have sort of a larger discussion about that next month. Excellent.

Okay. I believe we're at the end of our agenda then. There's nothing else. Right? Nothing for that.

We couldn't do it anyway if we didn't. We didn't quorum anymore.

Can't even talk.

Just kidding. You know, on the process currently right now for brass, there's not, like, a waiting period. Right? No. And I think that's probably the you know?

And There's a number of things.

Yeah. There's I I I yeah. I mean, just having a a a step Mhmm. So people can see.

Even yeah. Even if

you do this Yeah. Then you have to go here.

Yeah.

If you got the approval, you can go down. Yeah. I think that's good. Yeah. So yes.

Figuring out how what that that is. Right.

Yep. So remember all those things. Of course, this will be recorded, you can always rewalk it too. But, yes, we'll absolutely have that on the agenda next month. Alright. We're at the end of our agenda. Are there any objections? Seeing no objections, we're

adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.