Madison: No Longer Just a Backwater Berg

I find it odd that, in the wake of 9/11 and multiple airline bankruptcies, the airport here is now larger and a traveler can reach more destinations non-stop. Isn't the airline industry down the shitter? Yet the Dane County Regional Airport is getting bigger and busier and offering more flights. The total square footage in the passenger terminal has grown from 126,000 in 2001 to 278,000 - more than doubled.

Three new baggage carrousels were installed
Six new rental car counters
The AC system was replaced
More waiting areas were installed
The ticket lobby was expanded
And the exterior was rehoolied with prairie landscaping, a new arbor, and the drop-off walkway was covered.

In 2002, 1.5 million passeengers passed through the airport. As for destinations, one can now grab a non-stop flight to:

Chicago (O'Hare & Midway)
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Minneapolis
Detroit
Cincinnati
Denver
Cleveland
Memphis
Newark

The most recent additions:
Washington D.C.
Dallas/Fort Worth
Orlando

And, starting next month, Las Vegas.

From some ads I've seen, one-way flights for these new destinations can be had for as cheap at $60. Now, I grant you folks in Chicago that the Dane Country Regional Airport is no O'Hare where one can grab a non-stop flight to Warsaw, but all this means something is going on. I suppose demand for these destinations has increased - so who's flying there? Well, the top 8 passenger markets are: New York (LaGuardia), Denver, Orlando, Washington (National), Phoenix, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Dallas/Ft. Worth. Now I see why the latest non-stops were added; apparently there truly is a large enough demand. Vegas and Orlando make sense as vacation destinations and various folks must go to D.C. in order to have confabs with the government but who are all these people going to Dallas? Who are these people that keep traveling? The population of Madison is growing, to be sure, but I'm thinking it's not the folks from Mexico that bus your table or clean your office that are taking these flights.

Speaking of Madison's population, I found some data.

Madison 2000: 208,054
Madison est. for 1 Jan 05: 221,735
Dane County 2000: 426,526
Dane county est. for 1 Jan 05: 458,297

And so Madison's population grew by 13,681 in the past few years. About half of this increase is accounted for by migration. I couldn't find anything specific to Madison about population growth by race but the statewide trend is for increases in Hispanic and Hmong populations. It is entirely possible that the percentage of white folk in this town has dropped to 87%!

I've only lived here for about 15 years but the city has certainly changed quite a bit in that time. With the construction of the convention center, downtown became all upscaled and yuppified meaning that some good taverns were lost to make way for very expensive restaurants. The surrounding area is being gentrified and overrun by new apartment complexes and condos. State Street, the drag which connects downtown with the University of Wisconsin campus is now quite dull. (Except when there are riots on Halloween.) The eclectic assembly of local shops and eateries is almost gone and has been replaced by Gaps and chain restaurants. But there's the Overture Center. A philanthropist gave the city a ton of cash to build an arts district downtown and so they built the Overture Center which, when complete, will house a few theaters and a museum or two. I'll wait to pass judgement until it is fully armed and operational. This shouldn't be too much longer - I think the final phase of construction will be completed in early 2006. We shall see if all those yuppies buying downtown condos are into the arts like they're supposed to be. My only gripe about the joint it that they kept the fascade from the old Capital Theater and it severely clashes with the new plain exterior of the rest of the complex. The only thing that doesn't seem to have changed is that businesses still won't locate themselves downtown. American Family bought a business park on the outskirts of town, Epic moved to nearby Verona (yet it is Madison that is going to provide bus service), Ray-o-Vac left the state - it seems that every new building that goes up has condos and retail space but precious office space. As a side note, I have to say that the Marina Condominiums that have gone up just down the street from here is one of the ugliest buildings ever. The architect ought to be drawn and quartered. The whole exterior is metal and looks like a monstrosity from the 1950s when everything had to look like a NASA orbiter. Seriously, this is one ugly piece of shit on our skyline. (And people bitch about Archipelago Village!) Keeping in line with it's horrid 50s look, I hereby re-name it Marina Condorama. The near-eastside Willy Street neighborhood used to be the haven of folks who never left the 1960s - hippies galore. While that element is certainly still there, new apartments are going up and, being on the isthmus with lakefront properties, housing costs have skyrocketed. Soon it too will be another generic yuppieville.

I haven't mentioned the west side because, well, I hate it. Having only been developed in the past 20 or so years, it's a sub-divided wasteland of malls, chain restaurants, and new office complexes. True nieghborhood taverns are unheard of. It lacks character and is ugly -think Naperville, Illinois. Campus is another story. Buildings on campus are going up hand over fist. Corporations are apparently donating lots of cash for research. Stem cell research started here so the state is throwing in a lot of money to get researchers to stay here and attract others. It wants high-tech biomedical money and, to do so, our governor is proposing to spend $750,000,000 to do so. The campus is posed to get the Wisconsin Instuute for Discovery, a $375 million project. The University's art museum got a huge gift and is going to expand with another 60,000 square feet by 2009 and will be a part of the revival of the 1908 East Campus Mall project which entails knocking down a dorm and building new ones in addition to new classroom buildings. I guess the idea is to have a pedestrian mall extended from the southeast dorms to Lake Mendota. I'm now looking over a draft of the Univeristy's Master Plan and it's a doozy. Here's are some elements of it excluding transportation, utility, and infrastructure works:

--Redevelop lower east campus area related to the Arts & Humanities District
--Redevelop the area around and related to the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery including Union South.
--Redevelop area around Linden Drive, east of Henry Mall including all new facilities south of Linden Drive.
--Redevelop College of Agriculture & Life Sciences campus with new animal and plant sciences facilities.
--New School of Nursing Building on Lot 85 with underground replacement parking
--700 new beds of residential housing in Lakeshore Residence Hall complex
--Walnut Street Greenhouses Expansion
--New School of Veterinary Medicine Large & Small Animal Hospital on Lot 62 with underground replacement parking
--New Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies ‘Green Building’ on site of old University Health Services & Naval ROTC buildings
--Replacement for Engineering Centers Building at the corner of Engineering Drive and Randall Avenue
--New Wendt Engineering Library and social study space west of Henry Mall, south of Materials Sciences
--New academic facility on Spring Street between Orchard and Charter Streets
--New Nutritional Sciences building on the site of the Stovall State Lab of Hygiene
--Replace Van Hise with a new academic facility
--Redevelopment of the Nolan & Zoology block with new academic buildings with possible overhead connector to the existing Chemistry building over Johnson Street
--New research tower for Educational Research at the corner of Brooks and Dayton Streets
--Redeveloped University Square (partnership with private developer) for University Health Service, Student Organizations, Bursur/Registrar/Financial Aids offices (project also includes private underground parking, private retail on the first two floors and a private housing component)
--Redeveloped Arts & Humanities district with an addition the Elvehjem Museum of Art, a new Music performance facility and a new Music faculty, practice and teaching facility
--Redevelopment of the block east of the Kohl Center for the Art Department and Art Studios

And on and on and on. While this master plan is looking 20-30 years into the future, some of these projects are slated for the near-term.

I can now see why urban planning is a field of study on its own.