MADISON, WI—The City of Madison recently selected Baum Development, LLC to help explore the feasibility of building the Madison Sustainability Commerce Center, and municipal officials hope the Chicago-based developer can recreate something like the Green Exchange, a 272,000-square-foot historic Chicago landmark it renovated and that now provides about 1,200 jobs.
"Ultimately, it's a financial issue," David Baum, president of Baum, tells GlobeSt.com. "We're scouting available buildings in Madison, deciding if we should renovate an existing one or build something new. We're also talking to architects, engineers, nonprofits, organic food producers, tech companies and other possible tenants to gauge their interest. Then we're going to distill all the information and see if it makes economic sense."
Baum adds that the company's experience with the Green Exchange and other projects has given it a familiarity with the equity and debt sources available for a development meant to showcase green building technologies, and expertise in putting to work the necessary government incentives and tax credits, including historic tax credits.
The Green Exchange was an underused building in a vacancy-prone industrial area on Chicago's Northwest Side. Today it features a 41,000-gallon rainwater collection system, an 8,000-square-foot organic garden and was recently awarded the 2013 Outstanding For-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project Award from the City of Chicago. More than 1,000 employees of Coyote Logistics, a third-party provider which, according to Forbes, has experienced 270% growth over the past three years, now work at the exchange.
"In Madison, our strong preference is to do another rehab," Baum says, a far more sustainable option than new construction. No final decision has been made, but Baum and other members of the project team selected by the city have identified some buildings in the Capitol East District, an old industrial area, much like the neighborhood around the Green Exchange, with many historic structures in need of makeovers.
"It's been underused for decades and it's still underused," he says, "but it's also an up-and-coming neighborhood and we feel we can enhance its economic vitality."
The project team also includes Bryant Moroder, principal of Sustainable Resource Group, and McKinstry, a Seattle-based provider of design and build services for high-performance buildings. McKinstry, which has an office in Madison, has constructed and operates three centers in the Pacific Northwest which cluster emerging technology companies.
"We're going to turn in our report to the city by May," Baum says. But he emphasizes that "we're not doing this as an academic exercise. We're looking to make a deal."
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
