Reset, restart: Madison-area businesses embrace new reality

The COVID-19 pandemic touched nearly every aspect of our lives, changing how and where we work, study, play and shop. With restrictions on social interaction and occupancy limits, retailers adopted new practices to comply with government health orders and to make customers comfortable.

As infection rates fall and more people get vaccinated, some of the changes will fade away, while others may be here to stay.

In March 2020, as stay-home orders forced businesses and offices to close, leaders at American Family Insurance were trying to figure out how to keep most of their 13,200 employees safe and productive at home.

Now, the Madison-based insurance company is trying to figure out how to bring them back.

PAID CONTENT

As the Princeton Club successfully prepared for the safe return of its members during the pandemic, it also planned for a brighter, cutting-edge future in which people place an even stronger emphasis on their health and fitness.

That two-pronged approach ensured that Princeton Club members and staff were protected by strict cleanliness and health standards, social distancing and air handling as they returned.  At the same time, the Princeton Club anticipated and quickly responded to its members’ changing fitness needs and expectations.

“People are more focused on their health than ever, and we want to go the extra mile in providing the resources to help them get results,” says Club President Andy Haugen. “We continue to expand the on-ramps for people to get in shape and be healthy.” 

For example, although the Princeton Club’s nine locations have long been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it has expanded when group fitness classes are available because people are working from home and their schedules have changed to meet those new demands.

So, in addition to offering more than 100 in-person fitness classes per week, the club has also added in club virtual cycling classes in the mid-morning, mid-afternoon and on demand.

“If you want to take a group cycling class, you can show up 24 hours a day and participate in a virtual spinning class in the studio, with the sound pumping and instructors on huge video screens,” Haugen says.

A unique feature at the Madison West Princeton Club is the rooftop terrace. The rooftop has a soccer field, tennis courts, cardio equipment and open space for exercise and walking. 

Members and staff have been taking full advantage of this space over the past year for everything from Body Pump classes, speed and agility training, to sunset stretch classes.  The ability to be outside on the rooftop, not have to wear a mask, and still be able to get a great workout at the club has been so valuable for members.  The Fitchburg and Madison East locations set up tents and created more outdoor spaces for classes as well.   

The Princeton Club also revamped its member app, which allows members to check in to the club with their phone, sign up for classes and personal training sessions, communicate with the club and more.   The club also offers free childcare and reserving a space for your child is now done quickly online. 

The pandemic underscored what staff members at the Princeton Club already knew – that engaging people in fitness is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

So, the club expanded programs to serve that increasingly wide range of needs.  Exercise as stress relief and mental health care is so important right now.  So when you get a great workout the benefits last well beyond your time spent at the club.  Additionally, “We’ve added even more to our recovery areas with access to Theraguns for members to use before and after workouts.,” says Haugen.

Theraguns are a percussive therapy massage device that helps speed recovery after exercise.  They also help relieve stress and relax the body by releasing tension and fluid deep in the muscles.  It can also increase blood circulation which allows more oxygen and nutrients to reach the muscles to promote recovery.  The devices have been incredibly popular.

“If someone didn’t exercise quite as often during the pandemic, the Theraguns and our HydroMassage can have a big impact reducing soreness and helping maximize the time spent exercising” 

One-on-one training has also seen a big increase in demand as members look for private spaces to train and utilize the knowledge of the trainers to take their health goals seriously.

Being healthy also means eating right.

The Princeton Clubs offers meal plans prepared through Fit Fresh Cuisine.  Members can pick up their meals for the week at the Princeton Club locations or directly from the restaurant located at Princeton Club West.  Fit Fresh has an emphasis on locally sourced food and organic produce with all their meals. 

All of these innovations help provide more access to fitness routines that respond to people’s new lifestyles.  And the Princeton Club’s amenities will help to ensure that members remain engaged and healthy.

“We offer all of these different pathways to a better tomorrow.  Variety in your exercise routine produces better engagement and better long-term results,” Haugen says.

The addition of new capabilities at the Princeton Club are an answer to the community’s thirst for better lifestyles as we emerge from the pandemic.

“We can help people solve their fitness needs with better access, new programs and technology that track their fitness – both inside and outside the club – because people know their health is so important,” adds Haugen.

If you're ready to make that change in your health and start a new exercise program the Princeton Club is ready to help.  With locations all over the Madison area they want your next workout to be convenient and easy.  Visit Princetonclub.net more details and a free trial pass.    

 

On their websites, members of the Food Fight restaurant group list their safety protocols alongside their menus. In email blasts to customers and on its social media pages, the Monona-based company doesn’t shy from discussing its cleaning practices.

Highlighting such details may have seemed unnecessary pre-pandemic. But the company, which operates 19 Madison-area restaurants, knows keeping the trust of its diners and employees is key to returning to full operation, said Caitlin Suemnicht, Food Fight’s chief operating officer.

The hoarding of toilet paper, canned soup and meat faded as people realized the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t going away in six weeks. But there’s one commodity that’s still in hot demand: data.

As work, school and most social interactions shifted to online platforms, internet usage skyrocketed by as much as 50%, according to a report from analytics firm OpenVault.

Habitat for Humanity expects to build more homes but is facing higher construction costs due to a rise in the cost for building materials.

The River Food Pantry is looking to complete a major expansion and its newly launched online ordering and delivery service is here to stay, assuming donations don’t decline.

PAID CONTENT

Grieving the loss of a loved one is difficult enough, but the COVID-19 pandemic provided Cress Funeral and Cremation Service with a demanding new challenge; how to best serve families while protecting public health.

“Our whole focus throughout the pandemic was to bring service back for our families, even when health restrictions limited funeral attendance to 10 people,” says Scott Kundinger, Director of Operations at Cress.

The directors at Cress served families by facilitating drive-by visitations, video-conferenced arrangements, streamed services, and held outdoor tent services.

“Funeral directors are passionate about supporting families during and after a loss. We’re here to help,” Kundinger added. “Families wanted to have a service to honor their loved ones with family and friends. We were able to bring a lot of joy to families by providing them with options that worked and that accommodated their grieving.”

Cress knows that grieving is a normal, necessary process that extends well beyond the service.  To assist in this process, Cress recently offered the community free monthly video-conferenced grief and loss support sessions, led by counselor Kristen Ernst, owner of The Center for Hope and Healing (hopeandhealingcounseling.com).

“It’s amazing how people reached out to Kristen. We felt it was something that families could benefit from during such a difficult time,” Kundinger says, adding that the sessions provide connection, support and a way to access more resources, if needed.

Ernst says the sessions have been helpful at a trying time.

“People are needing to be with those who are like minded and are going through similar emotions of grief.  The virtual session provides a sense of community where people feel safe to express their feelings,” Ernst says.

Ernst echoed Kundinger, pointing out the importance of publicly-expressed grief.

“Public mourning and ceremony give validation to our emotions and help with the grief process,” she says. “Without our ability to gather in person, virtual group sessions, online memorials and other creative ways to mourn are absolutely necessary.” 

Christine Mickelson, a managing funeral director at Cress, says her co-workers clung to traditional values as they discovered new avenues which allowed families to begin the grieving process.

“The past months have really encouraged me to rely on communication, education and creativity to ensure the families I am serving are being able to grieve and support one another as much as they can when losing a loved one in such a restricted time,” Mickelson says. “I am grateful to have been a funeral director during this pandemic knowing I gave families every opportunity possible by pushing myself to think out of my comfort zone.”

Cress has also worked to adapt post-service events it conducts for families that have lost loved ones.

“Normally, we have a Service of Remembrance at the end of the year remembering all the loved ones we served over the year. This year we held a virtual remembrance service and more families were able to participate,” Kundinger says. “People told their stories, showed pictures of their loved ones and it was really beneficial for everyone.”

The virtual event was so popular that Cress is considering having both live and virtual events in the future.

Grief and mourning take on even greater significance as Memorial Day approaches. Having experience in providing care and guidance for the families of deceased veterans, Cress has supported veterans groups such as Dryhootch, an organization formed by combat veterans to help veterans in their return home, and local American Legion Posts.

“It’s a good time to honor the veterans who sacrificed in so many different ways throughout their lives. At Cress, it is a privilege and honor to serve veterans and their families and ensure they that have our support. The pandemic won’t change that,” he adds.

Throughout the crisis, staff members comforted area families, driven by a powerful ethic blending service, compassion and empathy – the signature qualities of Cress Funeral and Cremation Service for over 150 years.

In its effort to make streets more pedestrian-friendly, Madison and other cities around the country have long relied on “mixed-use” developments, which combine offices and retail space on the first floor with apartments or condos in the stories above.

But the pandemic has exacerbated the already soft demand for some of these spaces, leaving more empty storefronts.

Some Madison-area restaurant owners who developed online restaurant concepts during the pandemic say the experiments paid off.

“It’s kind of crazy. ... It’s almost like we’re so busy, we don’t even want to tell anybody that we’re busy,” said Eric Suemnicht, co-owner and CEO of the three Madison-area Nitty Gritty restaurants, which started an online chicken brand in January.

Amid a fast-spreading virus that at times threatened to overwhelm them, health care providers had to quickly retool many of their practices and protocols last year.

Some of those innovations worked so well that hospitals and clinics in the Madison area now expect them to continue after the COVID-19 pandemic passes.

PAID CONTENT

The Wisconsin Idea is the notion that the benefits of the University of Wisconsin should ripple well beyond the borders of campus. If you wanted to see the Wisconsin Idea in action, you could visit University Research Park. Taking a pioneering role in solving today’s problems while constantly looking ahead to build a  future filled with the promise of discovery is the signature of the University Research Park.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge that companies and scientists in the park eagerly embraced. As the pandemic deepened, at least six private companies and two UW-Madison research labs at the west-side park swiftly pivoted to launch pandemic-related projects.

“We are a place where solutions are born. When you see something like the pandemic hit the world with a shock, it really reminds you of how important it is to invest in life science research and development to be prepared to meet these kinds of challenges,” says Aaron Olver, managing director of the park, which is home to more than 125 companies employing about 4,100 people.

Nurturing and expanding collaboration and a sense of community is vital – for pushing the boundaries of discovery and to enriching the Madison area.

That’s why the park – begun in 1984 – is planning for its next chapter, one that maps out a more vibrant urban feel with amenities igniting lively collaboration, entrepreneurship and community involvement.

Called the Element Collective District, the development concept calls for 400,000 square feet of construction that includes a 120-room hotel, a multi-story laboratory and office building, 180 units of housing, retail space, a climbing gym, a food hall and parking at the corner of Mineral Point Road and Whitney Way.

“It will cause more mingling and chance encounters and create a more campus-like park,” says Olver. “Our companies love the location, but they don’t have a place to go to lunch, have coffee or have a drink together after work. And employees increasingly express an interest in living closer to work.”

Just as important, making the 250-acre park denser also reduces sprawl, promotes high-quality infill development, encourages employees to use public transit on a planned Bus Rapid Transit route and creates a whole neighborhood that benefits companies, their employees and the Madison community.

“When you think about Madison-area employment centers, University Research Park is the least dense and contains no housing,” Olver says. “Yet it’s one of the few conveniently located centers inside the beltline with great bus and bike access.”

At a time when life and work are more integrated than ever before, providing housing in the park for the first time will helps companies attract employees and reduce reliance on commuting.

“As we think about how we address equity and sustainability in the Madison area and deal with climate resilience, what we really need is healthier, more transit friendly development patterns,” says Olver. “We need more ‘whole’ neighborhoods. This is an incredible opportunity to be better stewards of the land we have and give the park a dynamic new environment.”

The Milwaukee-based Mandel Group[AO1]  will partner with University Research Park to develop the project, which has an expected groundbreaking later this year, with completion in 2023.

The pandemic spotlights how the park’s companies and researchers reacted quickly to tackle the emerging crisis. Their creativity spawned a variety of virus-related projects aimed at muting the outbreak’s effects.

Those efforts ranged from publicly-traded Exact Sciences, which added large-scale COVID testing to its repertoire, to GoDX, a diagnostics startup that is developing a rapid, instrument-free COVID diagnostic tool offering results in 30 minutes.

Nimble Therapeutics partnered with Roche Diagnostics to help diagnose COVID patients and the David O’Connor Lab worked to develop a saliva-based test that offered results in hours. Nearby, world-renowned UW-Madison virologist Yoshi Kawaoka’s Influenza Research Institute partnered with Flugen to develop a nasal spray vaccine.

The Element Collective District aims to broaden that creativity and contribute to the success of its companies in innovating to meet future challenges, while providing the community a new model for high-quality development.

“We’re strong now and we want to ensure that we’re reinvesting in the park so that it will continue to be strong 50 years from now. This is a long-term vision to help keep Madison at the forefront of solving global challenges, whether they are thorny life science issues or better city-building,” Olver says.

By creating a neighborhood where ideas can soar, companies can thrive and the community can live, work and play in a sustainable way, University Research Park will enhance its record as a job creator transforming research into life-changing discoveries.

 

The newest beer coming out of Jim Goronson’s two-barrel brewing system couldn’t be more apropos.

Idun is a double IPA named after the Norse goddess of rejuvenation.

When COVID-19 outbreaks forced mass shutdowns of large slaughterhouses last year, it led to an overwhelming surge in demand for small meat processors in Wisconsin.

Many of those operations remain booked through 2021 and even into 2022, resulting in a bottleneck for livestock producers, who don’t have the luxury of waiting to get their meat to market.

PAID CONTENT

Up Close & Musical® is a program of the Madison Symphony Orchestra that delivers the foundations of music to Dane County elementary schools each year. During the pandemic, we have been able to produce a virtual version of the program for the entire state of Wisconsin. But what is a foundation? The starting point for a journey. The introduction to a textbook on a complicated subject. The critical step in building a lifetime. A foundation gives us the tools we need to succeed in our endeavors to understand, to build, and to succeed. Music is profound — it speaks of strength, and beauty, and order. It gives us life when we are down. It propels us forward to achieve our dreams. Think about when you first noticed music: It was early — before you understood much else about life. Yet you understood intuitively what music was speaking to you. This is the purpose of the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s Up Close & Musical program. In a very close and personal way, it introduces the foundations of music to young students, so these students are able to start building the tools they need to take full use of this resource we so often casually enjoy as entertainment. This can be a crucial resource to young students. This is much more than entertainment to them. This can be a lifeline — an inspiration to achieve their dreams. This can be an idea that propels them forward to achieve their purpose. 

Usually Up Close & Musical involves a string quartet visiting schools to share the foundations of music with students directly, but this year the program was not able to take place as it normally would. Because the content and purpose of the program were so important and in-demand from educators, the MSO was able to arrange a virtual production of the UC&M program that would reach students with the same content. Before the program was only available in Dane County schools, but now its content is available statewide. Nothing can replace the in-person sounds of the violin, viola or cello in the classroom, but now students from around the state are able to learn about music in a profound way. We look forward to continuing the new paths we have found during the pandemic, as well as the old paths we hold dear.

Learn more about our Education & Community Engagement Programs: madisonsymphony.org/education

LINK UP...

What does it mean to be connected? We have all reevaluated this during our pandemic year, as we have remained connected with people in some ways but lost so many of the connections we maybe took for granted and now miss dearly. Meaningful connection is critical to what it means to be human. But for a certain population it is more critical than all others — students in late elementary or middle school. Students in this group must have a connection to many others — their peers, their role models, their mentors and teachers — this is non-negotiable. The Link Up program, created by Carnegie Hall and produced by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, creates the connections that students need to further their educational and personal development. Usually students would learn music with voice and on recorder to be able to perform together with their peers from around the state and with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. This year, it is impossible for the orchestra and students to gather together but the MSO has produced a virtual concert that will link students with their peers virtually — as well as with orchestral musicians from around the world! This program and its modifications by Carnegie Hall and the MSO remind us that we can still find ways to be connected during this time of social distancing. The connections are never going to be the same as in-person performance and interaction, but sometimes there are opportunities we would have never found otherwise.

Learn more about our Education & Community Engagement Programs: madisonsymphony.org/education

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS Young Artist Series

Our latest addition features pianists Sophia and Jessica Jiang, sisters who have both performed as soloists with the Symphony in our Young People’s Competitions and Concerts. Most recently, they performed together with Jessica accompanying Sophia at The Final Forte on March 3, 2021. Sophia went on to win the competition! They share a duet — one of Dvorák’s four-handed Slavonic Dances — followed by a conversation.

Watch at madisonsymphony.org/homewithartists

When a group from Madison Opera walked inside the Overture Center a few weeks ago to film a video, several of the Madison Opera staff members — to their surprise — began to cry.

They were moved to tears by entering the empty, elegant, 400,000-square-foot center for the arts that has been shuttered since March 13 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the reason the contemporary dance company Kanopy Dance had to find a new home for its dance studio.

But the pandemic helped shape that new home.

PAID CONTENT

As the global economy bounces back, investors will face both uncertainties and opportunities. In order to maintain a strong portfolio, you’ll need to adjust for reflation, navigate volatility and position for structural growth. Our team is here to help you prepare for the aftermath of a global pandemic.

Here are 5 questions to consider to strengthen your portfolio:

• Are you positioned for reflation?

• Are you using volatility to invest and help preserve your assets?

• Are you seeking opportunities globally?

• Are you positioned for structural growth?

• Is your portfolio sustainable?

Looking further ahead, it is evident that the pandemic has accelerated various key trends. The post-pandemic world is likely to be more digital and more sustainable. It is also one in which economic power has shifted further from West to East. With this in mind, we think now is a good time for investors to take a fresh look at new allocation strategies. We want to help you invest in a bright future. Call us today to start the conversation.

Andrew D. Burish, CIMA® Managing Director 608-831-4282 andrew.burish@ubs.com

Andrew Burish has been ranked the #1 Best-In-State Wealth Advisor in Wisconsin by Forbes since 2018 and is ranked the #11 Wealth Advisor in the US by Forbes (2020).

The Burish Group has been named a Top 50 Private Wealth Management Team in the US by Barron’s for 2021.

The costs of the COVID-19 pandemic have been immeasurable. But as the state and the nation emerge from the trials of the last year, the Wisconsin State Journal asked readers which habits and practices we developed over the last year they’d like to see continue.

Here’s what some of you said: