Middleton Hills town center approved

Wisconsin project balances need for anchor store with sensitivity of impact. New urbanists are continually hon-ing their strategies for how to make mixed-use town centers work. A great example is Middleton Hills, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) near Madison. When the project was designed 10 years ago, planners envisioned a series of individually owned small shops in the project’s town center. In the last decade, the project has succeeded in its residential build-out, but developers showed little interest in the town center. Dan Erdman, son of the late town founder Marshall Erdman, tried his hand at the town center and came up with a plan that included a 42,000 sq. ft. Copps Supermarket. “I, too, believed in the small store vision ... it didn’t take long for retail reality to set in,” he said in a presentation at CNU XII in Chicago. Erdman found community support for his plan but also strong opposition. Besides offering a much larger store than many residents wanted, the plan also included serious design flaws. The supermarket turned its back on the town’s main street, and the plan called for delivery trucks to drive into the community, rather than accessing the store directly from the arterial. The final plan, a collaboration between Linville Architects and Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., solved these problems with liner builders, a second (pedestrian-oriented) “marketplace entrance,” and a new location for the loading dock. The plan was approved this May and was slated to break ground in July. The store is expected to open in May 2005. u