The city’s Plan Commission met for a special meeting last Thursday with the city’s Landmarks Commission to untangle how the two commissions communicate with each other.
The Plan Commission is in charge of, broadly speaking, deciding what buildings get built in Madison. The Landmarks Commission, meanwhile, decides which historic neighborhoods, landmarks, and buildings to preserve.
That means that the two city committees are often at odds with each other, weighing the needs of a growing city with preserving its past.
Those competing values flare up over new developments – whether a new building would fit the character of a historic neighborhood, or if a building has enough historic value to the city to be saved from being torn down.
The meeting last Thursday was meant to clarify the relationship between the two commissions when a building is on the chopping block. It also sought to sort out the authority of the Landmarks Commission when deciding the fate of a building up for demolition.
When a developer submits a building for demolition, the Plan Commission will send the plans to the Landmarks Commission, where they will rate a building’s historic value. But just because the Landmarks Commission deems a building to have historic value, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Plan Commission won’t block the demolition.
Plan Commission chair Ledell Zellers says that she made a list of demolition projects from 2018 to the present that were deemed historically significant by the Landmarks Commission.
“…there were about 16 buildings that were (historically significant). One of those requests for demolition, the Plan Commission denied, and (that) was overridden by the Common Council, 11 were approved by the Plan Commission for demolition, two were withdrawn by the applicant, and then two were mitigated,” Zellers says. “So the vast majority of what comes to the Plan Commission as being (historically) significant has been approved for demolition.
If most of the demolition permits go through the Plan Commission, regardless of what designation the buildings received from the Landmarks Commission, then why ask at all?
Several members of the Plan Commission pointed to a project earlier this year on East Dayton street, where an old warehouse was proposed to be demolished for a new hotel. After first being deemed historic by the Landmarks Commission, the developer then went to change their building plans in order to keep the historic nature of the building alive, while allowing them to use the building for its new use.
That, Plan Commission member Bradley Cantrell, is what it looks like when the two groups work in tandem.
“That project is one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time, because it shows how the Landmarks Commission, the Plan Commission, and staff worked together to make something really good,” Cantrell says. “Even though it went from (historically valuable) to (historically valuable), but in my opinion, it ended up being (not significant), because it preserves much of how it looks right now.”
Last Thursday’s meeting was just a roundtable discussion between the two committees, and will not lead to any immediate committee or ordinance changes. Alder Erik Paulson, who sits on the Plan Commission, says that the meeting was to clarify and strengthen the relationship between the two committees.
“The Landmarks Commission wants to make sure that the Plan Commission knows that (they) are there to help give additional feedback wherever they think it is appropriate,” Paulson says.
Paulson says that one thing that last Thursday’s meeting was not about is to look for ways to prevent future demolitions, but for the Plan Commission to learn what is historically significant when deciding which buildings should be demolished.
Photo courtesy: City of Madison Plan Commission