Although most UW-Madison students are comfortably familiar with the surrounding campus area, many have never seen the city's troubled Allied Drive neighborhood.
But tonight at 9 p.m., Mayor Dave Cieslewicz will ride along with Madison police officers through the south side neighborhood, the site of much of Madison's serious crime.
Late last year, a 13-year-old boy allegedly sexually assaulted 11 women at gunpoint on the nearby Southwest Bike Path. And according to police, the area saw more than 500 'crimes against society' in 2005, ranging from drug dealing to assault.
Cieslewicz spokesperson George Twigg said the mayor wants to experience the area on an average night to better understand current conditions.
'He did a ride along earlier when he had first taken office,' Twigg said. 'But he felt it was that time to get back out and take another look at things.
'He is very interested in getting out of the mayor's office and seeing what is really going on out on the streets,' Twigg added.
Many UW-Madison students seem to know little about the Allied Drive area.
'I have absolutely no idea where Allied Drive even is,' UW-Madison sophomore Rochelle Affias said. 'I'm just familiar with the campus area and a little bit of the local residential areas.'
Ald. Austin King, District 8, said the area 'has definitely seen better days.'
According to King, the neighborhood began as a graduate student housing development in the 1970s, consisting mainly of the same eight-unit apartments that define the neighborhood today.
King said the city has been heavily involved in confronting the neighborhood's problems.
'The mayor has been very aggressive in looking for city solutions to the problems that Allied Drive is facing and we have invested an incredible amount of money into that neighborhood in recent years,' King said. 'It suffered for a long time from a sort of lack of attention from the city but it's definitely on everyone's radar screens in city hall.'
In addition, the community development block grant commission helps work with federal funds for housing and economic developments throughout the city, especially with Allied Drive. The commission recently invested approximately $2 million in the redevelopment of a large commercial lot in the Allied Drive area.
Though optimistic about the future, King said there is still a lot of room for improvement in the area.
'It's a very geographically isolated neighborhood,' King said. 'There is an incredible amount of poverty there, high unemployment, a lot of drug abuse issues and crime issues, and absentee landlords.'
