This summer the southeast campus will undergo a four-year redevelopment project at the University Square lot located north of Gordon Commons.
The Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee met Monday with UW-Madison representatives and Executive Management Inc., the private firm that owns University Square, to discuss the new 12-story project slated to be finished in Aug. 2009.
The new complex will feature two floors of parking and two floors of retail space.
The third floor will feature a common garden roof that will be shared between two towers, the UW Tower and a private residence tower.
The first two floors of UW Tower will be the new home to student organizations. 'It's going to be a home to student government organizations and will provide rooms and spaces for all kinds of student activities,' EMI developer Eric Lawson said.
The tower will also be home to four floors of both the clinical and counseling wings of University Health Services and two floors of student services including the Office of the Bursar, Office of the Registrar, and Student Financial Services.
The private residence tower will have ten floors of apartments, with 350 units of one, two, three and four-room apartments, some of which will feature balconies.
Developers assuaged the doubts of some committee members over whether more housing would be needed with so many new high-rise apartments on the east side of campus.
'We are already seeing a move from students who have been encroaching in the outskirts of campus back to the downtown area. This will just further add to it,' EMI owner Greg Rice said.
The project is part of UW-Madison's overall redevelopment plan that has been progressing for the past four years.
'University Square is the centerpiece of our whole east campus development plan. Providing commercial opportunities, housing opportunities and student services in the same campus location is going to be a great improvement for all those areas,' Associate Vice Chancellor Alan Fish said.
The motion to send the project to the Urban Planning Commission on Nov. 2 was passed unanimously.
