Despite recent murder, residents still committed to Bassett neighborhood
On a sultry summer day, Sheridan Glen has the interior of his BMW cool as he pulls out of the parking lot of his home in the 4th Ward Lofts. A Madison resident for eight years, Glen has immersed himself in the historical fabric of one of Madison's oldest neighborhoods on the isthmus.
Glen is the manager of First Weber Group's Capitol Office, and his personal and professional home turf is the Bassett Neighborhood, located just west of the State Capitol. There are few, if any, buildings he doesn't know something about.
Driving past Tobacco Lofts, he comments on how the ribbed, metal overhang is a nice touch that mimics the building's original design from some 100 years ago. He praises The BelMora and Bedford Courts as higher-end apartment and condominium projects that have had a hand in shaping the purposeful transformation of the neighborhood that began in earnest a decade ago. Nolen Shore condominium, the priciest addition to the neighborhood is, according to Glen, "an absolutely fabulous building." Block 49 is an "excellent urban adventure that worked," by stripping down one city block and rebuilding it to include apartments, condos and renovated homes.
Against the backdrop of all that is new, the not-so-nice buildings stand in stark contrast.
"As you can see, there is still a lot of crap remaining," he says while gesturing toward a few buildings on the 400 block of West Main Street.
In his opinion, the new Dane County Courthouse is a "super tanker plowing into the neighborhood," and the crumbling mound of St. Raphael Cathedral, which was built in 1854 and destroyed by an arson fire in 2005, is "sickening and one of the greatest tragedies to hit the Bassett neighborhood in recent years."
There are others.
"The green house is where the young lady was murdered," he says as he drives past 517 West Doty St. where University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered April 2. "That has really put a pall on the neighborhood."
So did the arrest in July of Adam Peterson, who lived in the area until March. Peterson has been charged with first-degree homicide for the January death of Madison resident Joel Marino, 31.
These developments produced some bad press for the Bassett neighborhood, an area still in the midst of major private and public redevelopment efforts aimed at investing in new construction and improving old housing stock, while clamping down on landlords who let homes fall into disrepair. By Glen's calculations, upward of $160 million has been pumped into the neighborhood by private developers.
The unsolved murder, more than the Peterson connection, seems to have hit residents in a visceral way. But, in general, they are not cowed. While crime exists, the murder is viewed as an exception, not the norm.
"It was quite a different neighborhood back in the 1990s, as far as who the residents were and the crime," says Peter Ostlind, Bassett District chair of Capital Neighborhoods, Inc. "Now there are more people who are invested in the neighborhood and are more prone to take action when they see things they don't like."
While he acknowledges crime exists, neighborhood residents, from his perspective, view the homicide as a random happening, rather than persistent problem.
"That was just a tragic, strange scenario," Ostlind says. "It is not something we would see every day."
Around lunchtime on the day Zimmermann was killed, 32-year-old Erin Joswick was feeding her 1-year-old daughter in the kitchen of her home directly across the street from Zimmermann's house. Joswick was waiting for her business partner, Mary Parker, to arrive so the three could go for a walk. By the time the women were ready to step out, the 21-year-old Zimmerman was dead and the steps of Joswick's home were taped off as part of the crime scene. Although the street was filled with police cars, she never heard them arrive.
"They just rolled up," Joswick says. "It's a scene I will never forget."
As the Zimmermann homicide illustrates, the neighborhood, despite its recent developments and new residents, is not immune from violence and criminal activities. Roughly 500 major crimes, including rape, murder, burglary, theft and aggravated assault, have been committed in the neighborhood over the past five years, according to Madison Police Department records. The numbers, though, have declined slightly each of the past five years.
Capt. Mary Schauf of the Madison Police Department's Central District says major crimes have stabilized as the result of acute attention paid to the area in recent years.
"We worked with several property owners to take care of some of the underlying issues that were causing problems in the area," Schauf says. "It was kind of like intensive therapy until we knew they could manage on their own."
An analysis by The Capital Times of a random sampling of Madison police calls to approximately two dozen rental properties on West Doty and West Main streets reveal noise, drunken episodes and drug activities continue to be lingering issues.
Take 431 West Main St.
The address is the apartment building where accused murderer Peterson lived. It's a three-story structure that has three separate street addresses, 427, 431 and 437 West Main Street. Police responded to 282 calls in the past year in connection to the three addresses. While close to half of the calls were for parking violations, the reports indicate chaotic or criminal activities are ongoing, including loud parties, drug activity and theft.
In the search warrant issued for Peterson's arrest, a Madison police officer states that the tenants of a second-floor apartment are known cocaine-base users. In an interview shortly after Peterson was arrested, another building tenant said most of the apartment's tenants are middle-age and suspected they either use or deal crack cocaine.
Calls from 427 West Main included a frantic call from a mom who believed her son may have attempted suicide by overdosing on drugs; a woman threatening to kill a male caller because he didn't buy her cigarettes; and a request for police to check on a homeless man who is outside the building and appears to be cold, drunk or both.
Calls for police assistance to other properties on West Main and West Doty streets, including the block where Zimmermann lived, show similar activities. A sampling of those calls reported a drunken person banging on the door and wandering around a house; marijuana plants growing in a backyard; a female afraid for her safety after a male in his 50s pushed past her to gain access into her building; a man who tried to force his way into the car of a 20-year-old woman; a homeless man in a secured building; a screen door smashed (attempted forced entry suspected); and a male walking into a home, telling the resident he shouldn't leave the door unlocked because the killer is nearby. According to the report, the caller in that incident didn't know if the intruder was referring to himself as the killer or someone else he had seen near the property. The call was made June 15.
"This is a scary place," UW student Greg Ellis said while moving out of apartment last Thursday. The 21-year-old is about to start his senior year at UW, and he and some of his roommates are moving out of the neighborhood. "We had the murder right down the street and there are drug deals going down all the time right across the street."
A vacant laundromat is located across the street from the three-story house Ellis shared with nine other guys for the past year. Yet while he and another roommate discuss the not-so-fine points of living in the area, such as the time they were approached on the front porch by someone selling hallucinogenic mushrooms, the time they came home to a prostitute and a man sitting on their back steps and the two times their apartment was burglarized, another roommate says they are blowing the bad elements of the neighborhood way out of proportion.
"The times we were robbed, the door was unlocked," says Dan Steger, 21, also a UW-Madison senior. "Honestly, I would live here for another year."
The argument between the three roommates plays out around the neighborhood. Some think it is safe, some don't.
"Burglaries and drunken episodes are the most persistent crimes, and the burglaries are targeted at the student rentals. They just aren't as hard to get into," says Capital Neighborhoods' Ostlind. "My general sense is that other crimes haven't gone up lately. I think there is a greater awareness because of Zimmermann."
The Bassett Neighborhood, named for Richard Bassett, a signer of the U.S. Constitution from Delaware, is one of Madison's five downtown neighborhoods.
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, the first document referring to the Bassett Neighborhood by name dates back to 1854.
Defined largely by English and German immigrants who first settled the area, many of its residents found employment when Milwaukee Road railroad laid tracks through the community in 1854. The family tree for Pat Rynes, the owner of Echo Tap & Grill, located on the corner of West Main and South Bedford streets, follows those lines. His grandparents, of German descent, opened the tavern in 1941 and his father worked for the railroad company in his early years.
Rynes himself was born 57 years ago in a five-unit apartment his grandmother owned just a few houses away from the bar he now runs. When Rynes was young, the neighborhood was filled with families and family-owned businesses.
"Everything you needed was right here," Rynes says.
As he sits on a park bench in the tavern's parking lot, he looks out toward West Washington Avenue a block away. Most of the buildings in his line of vision have changed owners, but he remembers what they were back in the day. The Heartland Credit Union was a service station. Two barber shops, now rental flats, used to be on West Main Street and Rhodes Steakhouse was located where the 4th Ward Lofts now sit.
Even the Echo Tap has changed, expanding in the early 1990s to include a restaurant to accommodate the increased tavern traffic Rynes correctly predicted would result from the Kohl Center opening less than a mile away on West Dayton Street. As a result, Rynes attracts a diverse group of customers. From his spot behind the bar, Rynes has a front-row seat to the pulse of the neighborhood, which he remembers calling "the old bloody 4th Ward" when he was a child.
"We did have a rough spell there, and everybody pulled together," says Rynes, in reference to Zimmermann's death. "But otherwise, I've been here for 40 years and we've had one break-in, but have never been robbed."
Adds Rynes: "Why would people invest $400,000 in a condo down here if they didn't think it was a safe place to live?"
As he gets up from the bench and heads back into the tavern, Rynes tells a man who has decided to rest on the parking lot curb that he needs to find another place to sit. With his military haircut, muscular physique and twin silver hoops in his left ear, he has the tough-guy look down cold. The man moves, heading across the street toward the bus station.
Earlier that week, a block away from the Echo Tap, longtime developer Bob Keller had lunch at Jo's Tazzina Cafe. It is Keller's hope that the cafe can become a popular gathering place for the neighborhood. On this particular afternoon, most tables were full.
The cafe is part of Tuscan Place, Keller's mixed-use development on West Bassett and West Main streets that also includes a wine shop and upper-level apartments.
"How can you go wrong buying property four blocks from the Capitol?" Keller asks. "It always will be worth something."
With that philosophy, Keller bought his first house in the Bassett Neighborhood some 40 years ago. In the decades since, he has amassed numerous properties, built large apartment and condo projects and worked to bring small businesses into the area.
The grittier underbelly of the neighborhood started to cause him concern when he began more upscale projects such as Wilson Bay, Bedford Court and City Place. In his opinion, drunken individuals hanging out on street corners and discarded bottles and cups from a previous night's college party acted as deterrents to the type of people he wanted to attract to his properties.
To try to rectify the problems, he transformed two of the four street corners at the intersection of West Main and South Bassett streets. One result was Tuscan Place. The other is the Daffodil Parker flower shop, which used to house a liquor store.
"Derelicts would go over there, buy liquor and sit around on the porches and cause trouble," he says. "It helped the neighborhood to get rid of it."
As stipulated by the lease, the wine shop cannot sell beer kegs and the size of liquor bottles is limited. "It is too expensive for the transients," he says.
In contrast to the longtime neighborhood personalities like Rynes and Keller, who have had a hand in shaping the look and feel of the neighborhood, come newer, younger residents also determined to help transform the area.
Megin and Scott McDonell, along with their two young daughters, are one example. Needing to live in the area because of Scott's position as Dane County Board Chairman, the couple had three options: keep renting in Scott's district or buy a small condo or a fixer-upper. They went with the latter, receiving financial assistance through a city program specifically aimed at increasing homeownership in the area.
The McDonnells watched property prices in the area for a year before a few homes finally dropped below $300,000, aligning more closely to the couple's budget. Still the purchase will require a substantial financial commitment and much sweat equity.
Megin sold her house, which helped offset the $265,000 cost of their new home on West Doty Street, and the couple got back $18,000 from the former owner of their new downtown home to use for improvements. They also received $47,000 from the city to help with renovations. To transform the three-unit home to a 1,900-square-foot, one-family residence with a 500-square-foot rental property attached to the back will cost an estimated $80,000.
"And that's a moving target," Scott says.
There is little, if anything, about the interior of the home that doesn't have to be completely redone or replaced. The priciest project: fixing the foundation. It took four jacks to raise the home more than three inches. All the lead-pipe plumbing has to be replaced, walls have been torn down, the ceiling has been pulled down in areas, and the bathrooms can best be described as dated, with sections of the shower walls not even lining up with the room's walls.
"It's kind of exciting in a terrifying sort of way," Scott said while moving in earlier this month. "Our family is a tiny little piece of what was intended to happen down here. You can see the gentrification going on."
Several times Megin holds her face in her hands as she surveys her new home. "This house was abused," she says. "It needs some counseling."
The city-assisted homeownership program has enough money to assist 12 to 15 families. Yet with the program ending at the end of December, only two loans have been awarded, says Percy Brown, Madison's economic revitalization supervisor. Qualified applicants could receive up to $60,000, and the loan is forgiven after 10 years.
Brown and the McDonells agreed that the high cost of Bassett neighborhood homes, in addition to the renovation costs, is preventing the program from attracting more buyers. The average home cost in the neighborhood is estimated around $300,000, Brown said.
Not surprisingly, Joswick, the mother who is also the co-owner of Daffodil Parker, is aware of the McDonells' arrival. She saw them moving in and made a point to introduce herself.
As she sits on a chair amidst discarded flower petals, gently twisting together flower stems for a boutonniere to be worn in a weekend wedding, Joswick is the striking image of youth and vibrancy developers and the city would like to attract to the neighborhood. Because she and her husband live nearby, her baby daughter is a frequent visitor to the shop.
While the Zimmermann incident did make her question for the first time her decision to live with a child and run a business in the Bassett neighborhood, she said she is staying.
"I had my doors locked before, and I have them locked now," she says. "I would do it all again in a heartbeat."
Mike DeVries/The Capital Times
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Florist Erin Joswick, with daughter Stella, says the recent unsolved murder of UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann made her question her decision to live and work in the Bassett neighborhood.
