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Jun 25, 2023

Sneak peek inside the future Madison Public Market

Local Government Reporter Local Government Reporter The Madison Public Market will be built at the corner of East Johnson and North First streets, in a facility that formerly housed the city's Fleet

Local Government Reporter

Local Government Reporter

The Madison Public Market will be built at the corner of East Johnson and North First streets, in a facility that formerly housed the city's Fleet Services and was a temporary shelter for people who were homeless.

The building at 200 N. First St. doesn’t look like much right now — an empty 50,000-square-foot warehouse with lots of space and even more natural light. But one day it’s expected to be filled with a diverse set of vendors, shoppers and food industry entrepreneurs.

The Madison Public Market has been talked about in some capacity for nearly two decades and is closer to reality than ever before, with the City Council last week signing off on the lease for the building on First Street.

It’s a big step forward, said Matt Mikolajewski, the city’s Economic Development Division director, one that allows for the actual structural work to begin.

“One of the exciting things about this building is that it is in really good shape. Structurally, it is very sound. It has the windows, and the garage doors are still in good shape,” Mikolajewski said. “The space in many ways is going to look and feel very similar. When you come back here once it's open, you will recognize that you're standing here.”

He added, “It'll be cleaned up, obviously, and there will be new equipment and plumbing.”

The site of the future Madison Public Market is pictured on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. The building used to house the city of Madison Fleet Services. Construction is expected to be completed in two years.

The space is overwhelmingly large, with tall open ceilings that will stay through the renovation. On the corner of East Johnson Street and North First Street — right down the block from the new apartment complex The Standard and adjoining Starbucks — the site will add to the rapidly growing East Washington corridor.

It’s also one of the only city-owned properties that sits on 3.5 acres and allows for 120 on-site parking spaces, two outdoor seating areas and enough room for all the other public market amenities. Formerly the Fleet Services building until 2019, and then a temporary homeless shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic, it took years to find the right spot, said James Shulkin, a board member for the Madison Public Market Foundation.

While the city owns the land, the foundation will manage the facility. The two groups help set up the first inside look at the space with the Cap Times ahead of an open-to-the-public event in early September.

“I love the fact that this building is so bright and airy,” Shulkin said. “It's such a beautiful space. And there’s a real sense of ownership in the Public Market, that it's there for everybody and really represents the history of a community by showcasing the food and art and entertainment. We're happy the market is something that pulled all that together in one place, and it's a place for the entire community. Everybody can be here. Everybody can enjoy it.”

James Shulkin, a board member of the Madison Public Market Foundation, gives journalists from the Cap Times a tour of the site of the future market.

After a series of setbacks — including a $5.2 million budget gap that left the market’s fate up in the air — the project is finally coming to fruition, with a construction groundbreaking planned for this fall and an opening set for spring 2025.

The city is seeking bids from contractors to reconstruct the building, with proposals due Sept. 7. Mikolajewski said the city hopes there will be a bid or multiple ones that come in at or below the project’s $12.5 million budget for construction.

“Given just what the construction industry is seeing all over lately, projects have been coming in over budget,” he said. “We do have some contingencies built into our plans when we go out to bid. We say to the contractors, ‘We want everything and this is the price for everything,’ but then there are some options if we come in over budget.”

The city plans to maintain some of the current features of the former Fleet Services building, such as the design of the windows and garage doors, as it's rebuilt to become the Madison Public Market.

Replacing some of the windows and garage doors is an example of those cost-cutting alternatives.

“If we are so far over budget that there's not a clear path where we can do the fundamental parts of the project, then that would be a problem,” Mikolajewski said.

Brent Pauba, the city engineer managing the entire Public Market project, is optimistic that won’t be the case.

“All signs are pointing that we're gonna have multiple bids, which is important,” Pauba said. “The more bids that we have, the healthier the competition is, the more options we have.”

The project is designed to be a year-round, indoor marketplace featuring locally grown foods; handcrafted artwork, jewelry, wearables and collectibles; along with a center for food entrepreneurship that would help jumpstart businesses. The market also will have a food production facility to help those businesses grow, as well as an event space, outdoor patios and plazas.

The plan calls for 30 permanent vendors, as well as pop-up stores and restaurants. Shulkin, the foundation board member, said plans include two large anchor tenants on site — one would be a large restaurant and the other might be a brewpub.

Inside 200 N. First St., Pauba can finally start to see all the possibilities and potential come together.

“The fancy way of saying it is we're doing an ‘adaptive reuse’ of a building. Ultimately, that means that we're not demolishing the building and starting fresh. That gives us a lot of opportunities,” Pauba said. “This was built in the late ’50s, and to rebuild it in the same way that it was built would be really costly, much more than we have money for. And there's much less waste going to the landfill.”

The city’s design team is modernizing the space while also preserving as much history as possible. Mikolajewski simplified the entire project to “stripping down the inside of what's here and then putting it back together.”

Madison’s Public Market was influenced by the market in Milwaukee, said Shulkin, but will embody the community here. There will be an upstairs mezzanine level with extra seating and offices (like those in Milwaukee), but more opportunities for open-air to come into the space with large garage warehouse doors.

The 50,000-square-foot Madison Public Market facility is expected to include food vendors, pop-up shops, space for dining and entertainment, and facilities for startup businesses in the food industry.

Pointing to the current mezzanine space, Mikolajewski said “weird offices” currently take up that space.

“It's a little spooky,” he said. (He confirmed to the Cap Times that he does not think the building is haunted, though.)

Pauba said that even though the space used to be the city's bus fleet facility, it “oddly enough worked really well for what the future use will be for the vendors, with big, wide open spaces.”

If all goes according to plan with the bidding process and the city’s approval of the bid, construction could begin as soon as the end of this year and would last 13 months.

Allison Garfield joined the Cap Times in 2021 and covers local government. She graduated from UW-Madison with a degree in journalism and previously worked as a government watchdog reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and was the state capitol intern for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Support Allison's work and local journalism by becoming a Cap Times member. Follow her on Twitter @aligarfield_.

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