Public officials and the project team ceremonially broke ground Wednesday morning on the $71-million first phase of a major effort to revitalize Madison’s Community Development Authority (CDA) public housing community in the downtown “Triangle” neighborhood.
The Triangle is bound by West Washington Avenue, Park and Regent streets, fittingly forming a triangle shape just northwest of Monona Bay. It’s currently home to the CDA’s Brittingham, Gay Braxton and Karabis apartments, Parkside Highrise and Parkside Townhomes. These buildings were constructed between 1965 and 1978.
The four-phase “Taking Shape, Our Triangle” project will replace the five aging buildings with eight new ones — both residential and community spaces — across the 10-acre site, over the next decade.
The massive project is a partnership between the CDA and Madison-based developer New Year Investments. Financed largely through federal and state funds, grants and low-income housing tax credits, the entire Triangle overhaul is expected to cost more than $300 million.
By the end of construction, every one of the current Triangle residents (about 355 people) will have a new, more accessible, more efficient home and access to a wealth of modern community spaces. There are about 340 CDA homes in the existing Triangle buildings. When the project is complete, “we’re going to see up to 1,200 new homes,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
The new residences will be affordable to families “at a range of different income levels,” the mayor said, and current residents’ rent will remain unchanged at approximately 30% of their monthly income, “even after they move into their new and better homes.”
Wednesday marked the beginning of construction on Taking Shape Building B1 — a five-story, 164-unit complex which will become home to residents of the existing Brittingham Apartments, currently located at 755 Braxton Place.
Brittingham was built in 1976. Major repairs and necessary improvements have been identified, including needs for better air conditioning, improved laundry facilities and greater accessibility for disabled residents.
“The Triangle buildings really were starting to deteriorate,” Rhodes-Conway said. “The CDA was looking at … pretty significant costs if we were just to renovate to bring them up to modern standards.”
The mayor said the CDA came to her with suggestions to “do something big” instead. She was on board, as long as Triangle residents were involved in the process and the redeveloped community prioritized sustainability.
Plans to renovate the Triangle neighborhood — both the CDA properties and the neighboring Bayview development — were adopted by the City Council in 2019. In 2021, the city began searching for a partner developer for the CDA project. New Year Investments was selected in October of that year.
According to the city, B1 will be built to Enterprise Green Communities standards, a set of green-building criteria for affordable housing. B1 will include Madison’s largest residential geothermal system, which will serve as its heat and air-conditioning source.
Reimagining the Triangle
The diverse Greenbush neighborhood once occupied the present-day Triangle before early-1960s urban renewal forced over 1,000 residents and numerous businesses to relocate. Considering this, principal at New Year Investments Anne Neujahr Morrison said it was especially important to “learn from the past” and involve Triangle residents in what they want the future to look like. Many residents are people of color, have disabilities or are senior citizens.
According to the Taking Shape development plan, since spring 2022, the project team has held over 50 engagement sessions to learn what residents value, hope to improve and want to make sure isn’t changed in their new community.
“We heard that residents want to enjoy their homes, both inside and outside,” Neujahr Morrison said. “They want connection to their community, and they want their homes to meet their needs — they want them to be healthy, accessible, safe and sustainable.”
A major resident concern was the possibility of displacement or life disruptions during the construction, CDA board chair Claude Gilmore said. To mitigate this, the existing buildings will be replaced in phases so residents only have to move once: from their old homes to their new ones.
The plan calls for building on vacant land first before razing existing buildings. For example, Brittingham Apartments will not be demolished until B1 is move-in-ready in late 2026 or early 2027. When that time comes, the Taking Shape development team plans to celebrate with a ribbon-cutting event for Phase 1 along with another groundbreaking ceremony for Phase 2.
Modern living in community
The new Triangle will prioritize resident well-being through features like private courtyard and gardening space, a bike and pedestrian path, and modern common areas — including a fitness center, art room, community kitchen, and library and computer room. Many of these spaces exist in some form in the current CDA buildings. But soon, they’ll be better connected so tenants of all Triangle residences have equally seamless access.
In addition to the B1 apartments, Phase 1 will add a “Community Hub” connected to all residential buildings by outdoor pathways and indoor routes, making it easily accessible even in Wisconsin winters. The hub will include the fitness, art, kitchen and library facilities, as well as multi-purpose spaces, a food pantry, and offices for the CDA, nurses and other service providers.
Resident engagement sessions found that the locally owned Asian Midway Foods grocery store at the Triangle’s southern tip is a valued community resource. The store, built at the same time as the neighboring CDA residences, could also use a facelift. Phase 3 of Taking Shape, still a few years away, includes plans for an eight-story multi-use building with a first-floor grocery store. According to the development plan, Asian Midway expressed interest in relocating to the new space.
At Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony, Gov. Tony Evers called the Taking Shape project an “incredible milestone” for Madison.
“Affordable housing is absolutely the No. 1 issue I hear most about across the state,” he said. “I know that finding affordable, accessible housing can be particularly challenging for low-income families, seniors and folks with disabilities, but … with projects like this, we are connecting the dots.”
A modernizing neighborhood
In addition to the five CDA structures, the space between West Washington, Park and Regent contains two medical facilities and the brightly colored Bayview affordable housing development.
Bayview provides housing, social services and community programming to a diverse group of Madison families and residents. Earlier this year, three-and-a-half years of construction concluded and modernized Bayview, replacing 102 dwellings from the 1970s with 57 new townhouses, 73 apartments and a new community center.
