State Street Campus Garage

Madison is again looking to use its most potent financing tool to boost the Downtown, which city officials say is growing but needs support for State Street and its businesses, low-cost housing and infrastructure.

Alds. Patrick Heck and Mike Verveer are proposing to create a tax incremental financing (TIF) district in the greater State Street area between Capitol Square and Lake Street. It would deliver funds for State Street amenities, repairs and upgrades; $4.2 million in grants to small businesses that suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic and destructive protests of 2020; and $15 million to help finance public elements of the proposed, roughly $140 million redevelopment of a State Street parking garage at 415 N. Lake St.

Madison city staff are recommending a Minneapolis firm for a major Downtown development that would replace the obsolete State Street Campus Garage with housing, commercial space, public parking and an intercity bus garage.

While Mortenson Development got the nod, city staff say three other finalists — CA Ventures of Chicago, CRG of Chicago, and Smith Gilbane of Milwaukee — could also produce a high-quality redevelopment to reimagine the prominent site at 415 N. Lake St., just a half block off State Street and Library Mall.

Madison is looking to raze the massive, “functionally obsolete” State Street Campus Garage for a mixed-use project that would deliver a new public parking structure, intercity bus garage, commercial space and housing of a scale resembling the Judge Doyle Square project rising off Capitol Square.

The city is now crafting a request for developer proposals for the project, which re-imagines the prominent site at 415 N. Lake St., just a half block off State Street and Library Mall.