Fleet Services Building

Galway Companies is proposing to replace the Washington Plaza shopping center with a seven-story, mixed-use project with housing and commercial space at the corner of North First Street and East Washington Avenue on the East Side.

An aggressive outreach effort has helped the homeless camping at McPike Park on the Near East Side and others living outdoors find shelter in the frigid weather, officials said.

The former Fleet Services Building, future home of the Madison Public Market, can accommodate at least 250 men.

Since March, the city has been sheltering homeless men at the Warner Park Community Recreation Center on the North Side.

But the nonprofit Madison Public Market Foundation, which would run the market in a city-owned building, is imploring policymakers to stay the course.

The Madison City Council also gave the green light on the Madison Public Market, Judge Doyle Square and SSM Health Clinic developments. 

The City Council will take up the zoning changes at its March 3 meeting.

The Madison Public Market is expected to open in the fall of 2021. 

“For the first time, the public is really going to be able to visualize what the space is going to look like,” a city engineering spokeswoman said.

The city and owners of the shopping center were roughly $1.6 million apart on the value of private land the city was to buy.

Madison shifts the location of the future public market 250 feet from the site of a commercial shopping plaza to the city-owned Fleet Services building on First Street.

The preliminary design details the first phase of the project with a three-story public market and private retail and office space at the corner of East Washington Avenue and First Street.

The mayor proposes to link the public market to the redevelopment of the Washington Plaza shopping center on East Washington Avenue.

The mayor had reluctantly proposed to delay public market until 2021, but will now seek construction in 2018.