Covid Chronicles. Chapter 53: State Street in Madison Wisconsin

 

Read chapter 52 here

Photos and videos by Retiring Guy

Friday, June 12, 2020 

During our 34 years in Middleton, JoAnna and I have seen first-hand the ups and down of Madison’s State Street business district, an 8-block pedestrian zone (city busses allowed) that connects the State Capitol and the University of Wisconsin campus. During the 1990s, Freak Feast, a Halloween bash that attracted revelers from all over the Midwest, occasionally ended up with clashes between the police and excessively drunken partiers, with some property damage taking place. 

The construction of upscale condos, apartments, and privately owned, upscale student housing transformed the area starting in the mid-2000s, which attracted numerous new businesses – restaurants and bars, in particular – catering to this relatively well-heeled group. 

When I served on the Dane County Board of Supervisors, which offered me numerous opportunities to walk the length of State Street after a bus ride from Middleton, I noticed more empty storefronts than usual. 

A significant number of establishments, even a few “State Street Stalwarts”, as I refer to them -- businesses that had a decades-long presence – were done in by a combination of escalating rents (landlord greed), lack of free parking, expanding entertainment options throughout the entire county, and the digital economy. The few remaining retailers continue to struggle to make a go of it. 

Wisconsin State Journal, 6/7/2020

Then along came the double whammy of the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd protests. 

The boarded-up storefronts are a combination of precautionary measures and post-riot enclosures. For the past week, volunteers have painted murals and other artwork on the plywood coverings. Many of them are quite impressive, stunning in their visual appeal, but a number of them are barely more than angry

scrawls,  Not to detract from the good intentions of this street art project, but the overall the effect is very much like putting lipstick on a pig.   It doesn’t obscure the overwhelming sense of desolation that has now settled over State Street. 

Some stores have reopened, a few have even removed the plywood or are in the process of doing do, and number of restaurants have re-established, and in some cases expanded, their outdoor seating, but I’d guess at least half of the businesses remain shuttered. 

A member survey of the Central Business Improvement District found that as many as 40 businesses – the group has 100 members – are unlikely to reopen. With this fact in mind, I sometimes felt as though JoAnna and I were paying our last respects to one of Madison’s most iconic locations. 

The saddest part of this spectacle is the anticipated loss of many locally-owned business. I have to think that most of the looters and rioters had no sense of whom they were hurting. Their wrath was wholly misplaced. They should have taken their protest a few blocks east, to the front door of the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s leading business organization, whose lobbyists all served as GOP legislative aides in the State Capitol. 

At a glance, State Street looks desolate due to the lack of traffic. But that’s how it was designed back in the late 1960s, though, in typical Madison fashion, it took more than a few years to implement the plan.  At busier times, especially when UW-Madison is in full swing, the street resembles a bicycle superhighway. 

Upon closer inspection, you’ll find pedestrians and a few people sitting at the outdoor seating provided by Ian’s Pizza, a Madison institution. (One of its biggest sellers is a mac-and-cheese pie.) But the overall scene is far removed from an ordinary day, even on a Thursday midafternoon. 

But then ‘ordinary’ hasn’t been much-used in anyone’s vocabulary of late.

Read chapter 54 here