(For more retail coverage, click GlobeSt.com/RETAIL.)
MADISON, WI-When University Square, the $190 million mixed-use development under construction at University Avenue and Lake Street, opens in the fall 2008, a local developer's quest to transform an underused site into a project that ties into a major Big 10 campus will be more than a dozen years in the making. The 1.1 million-sf project, which currently combines 120,000-sf of retail, 250,000-sf of University of Wisconsin-Madison offices, 360 apartments, and parking garages, is a public/private partnership that was initiated by locally based Executive Management Inc. in 1996.
John Bergh, senior vice president of Siegel-Gallagher Inc., has been marketing the retail portion of the project, which includes space on the first and second floors. He says the plan calls for a mix of local and national specialty shops, destination and casual restaurants, and small and mid-size big box retail. More specifically, Bergh has been targeting drug stores, grocery stores, office supply stores, booksellers, apparel shops, and "new concept" retailers geared toward the university market. The retail center is slated to open on July 1, 2008, and the developer expects to begin turning over space to tenants as early as December 2007.
So far, Bergh says, there's been an "outstanding" response to University Square from potential tenants. "As one retailer told me, there is nothing about this project not to like. The project has it all—visibility, parking and a huge walk-to customer base in an underserved market."
Not only is University Square within walking distance of the university, which has 42,000 students and 16,000 faculty and staff members, it is one block from the Kohl Center, which draws nearly one million visitors for university athletic events every year. The developer also expects that the project's restaurants and retail space will be a destination for the greater Madison area, which has a population of 450,000. Bergh says the location is at the "crossroads" of Madison and more than 70,000 vehicles pass the site each day. He adds that University Square includes 260 spaces of retail parking and that there are more than 2,000 enclosed parking spaces within two blocks of the project.
Susan Springman, president of Executive Management Inc., says that the retail center should also benefit from the "synergy" created by the project's other uses, including a 250,000-sf office tower and 450,000 sf of housing. She says the office component, which will house the Student Activities Center, University Health Services, Bursar's Office, Student Services, Financial Aid Office and Registrar's Office, will be a "focal point" for students. The residential piece of the project comprises 360 one-, two- and three-and four-bedroom units and a rooftop garden.
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