Tag: Paul Soglin

Pursuing a rare opportunity, Madison may soon spend $5.5 million to buy 3.65 acres of shoreline property on Lake Monona next to Olin Park. Ald. Allen Arntsen, 13th District, who represents the site, two other council members and Mayor Paul Soglin on Tuesday will introduce a resolution to purchase properties at 330 and 342 E. Lakeside St. from the Wisconsin Medical Society. The property is currently improved, with a two-story, 41,026-square-foot office building and a surface parking lot. “The acquisition of lakefront property by the city is rare,” parks superintendent Eric Knepp said. “The Parks Division has successfully acquired a few individual lots of lakefront property to expand existing parks in the past decade — Merrill Springs and Esther Beach Parks — but it is very uncommon to have a 3.65-acre acquisition on the lake adjacent to an existing park. The city has long eyed the property as an addition to its parkland holdings and has held a first right of refusal to buy it since 1996, when the city purchased adjacent land from the medical society. The society contacted the city to discuss its interest, and the sides have been negotiating for the past few months, Knepp said. The medical society acquired the property in 1955 and began construction on an initial structure there that year with additions in the late 1960s and 1990s, said Dr. The medical society has long envisioned following its initial sale to the city decades ago with a sale of its headquarters property to the city for more parkland, and now that the building is far larger than the society’s needs, it’s time to make the transaction, Chumbley said.