UW-Madison student seeks public input
By Bert Lehman
Clintonville residents gave their input on the design of Riverwalk.
The project will be along the Pigeon River near the Clintonville Community Center into W.A. Olen Park.
The public input meeting on the Riverwalk plan took place at a Feb. 24 community input meeting.
Michael Walsh, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student who is developing the Riverwalk plan as part of his Senior Capstone project, provided information regarding the project.
Walsh said he completed an inventory analysis of the site during last fall’s semester.
During this analysis, he said he found several major issues with the site area.
These issues included: flooding in Olen Park, undesirable late-night activity, a lot of vacant buildings along Main Street, a lot of speeding vehicles on Main Street, a lack of friendliness of drivers to pedestrians and the lack of universal accessibility to walkways and roads along Pigeon River.
“I’ll be trying to come up with some design solutions to encourage people to walk downtown,” Walsh said.
He also cited that the rip-rap along the river could be dangerous for children because of the drop distance to the river.
“That’s something I’m going to consider when coming up with my design,” Walsh said.
Scope of plan
The scope of the Riverwalk project would include a master plan that starts at the Pigeon River dam near the Clintonville Community Center and works its way to the end of Olen Park, he said.
“For our project we have to have site focus, so my site focus is the Pigeon Riverwalk and how we can expand that and make it more of a destination for people,” Walsh said.
Residents reviewed images of design solutions that might work on the site. This included a restaurant along the river and an area with removable tables and chairs.
“It’s still very early in the design phase, so nothing that I have come up with is set in stone,” Walsh said. “I’d much rather have these ideas to get the idea generation started and then you guys have control of what could be in these areas.”
Other ideas included terraced concrete stairs along Pigeon River and suspended docks.
Walsh also allowed residents to view a top-down look at the current site, leaving space for them to write the problems they feel the current site has, as well as their ideas to make the site better.
Residents were also asked to provide information about what is working well in the area, as well as what should be changed.
Walsh stressed that everything is in the concept stage.
“But I’d love to see what you think about them,” he said.
He added that his professor is encouraging students to design something that “could be.”
An example of this would be a multi-purpose building where the vacant Merc building is currently located.
Long-term project
City Administrator Sharon Eveland said a Pigeon Riverwalk development plan, if approved in the future, is probably a 20-25-year plan before everything would be completed.
The plan would also be done in stages.
Walsh said his design proposal would be developed so it could be constructed in stages.
A resident expressed concern that the development plan did not address the flooding issue in Olen Park.
“It’s not necessarily going to come up with all the solutions for it, but it’s going to come up with potential ideas we can try to mitigate (against flooding),” Eveland said. “Some may not be possible for the city.”
Another resident suggested moving the skateboard park to the area along Pigeon River.
Walsh will be presenting his design for the project to his professors in mid-March.
Eveland said she hopes this presentation can be recorded and shown to Clintonville residents during another community input meeting.
She added that she is pleased with the work Walsh has done so far, and she is glad the city was chosen to be part of the Capstone project of UW-Madison’s Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture.
“This is something that would have cost probably $40,000 if you were to hire a consultant to do this,” Eveland said. “I think Michael is going to do a top-notch job on this.”
The feedback provided by residents at the input meeting was also beneficial to the project, Eveland said.
“We definitely got some really good feedback tonight and things to consider as he moves forward with the project,” Eveland said.