Economic Benefits - Block 66 Plan

We've been promoting our response to the Library's RFP as not only a better library facility but a superior land use plan because it takes an integrated approach to the development of Block 66 (bounded by West Washington Avenue, Henry Street, Mifflin Street and Fairchild Street). See Top Five Design Advantages

After construction of a new Central Library at the corner of West Washington and Henry Street, we propose to redevelop the "old" library site along Mifflin Street into a mixed use structure comprised of 250-270 hotel rooms, 400 structured parking stalls, and new sidewalk retail.

This land use puts additional parking where it is needed in the Central Business District, fulfills unmet demand for higher-quality hotel guest rooms in the Downtown, and will help catalyze additional activity at Overture Center, the 100 block of West Mifflin, upper State Street and the Capitol Square.

This new project will also generate economic benefits in the form direct and indirect employment, and significant direct property taxes, sales taxes, and room taxes for the City of Madison. Here are our best estimates:

Tax Revenues
We expect to invest $46 million in the Phase II development and forecast that property taxes will average $1 million annually through 2011.

Sales taxes directly generated by the hotel are estimated to total approximately $650,000 annually by the third, stabilized year of operation.

Room taxes are expected to reach $1,100,000 annually by the third year of operation.


Job Creation
The proposed hotel is projected to generate direct employment for 82 full-time equivalent employees. In addition to the direct employment created by the hotel, we would estimate that an employment multiplier of 2 would be applied to the direct employment to indicate the number of additional “indirect employment” jobs that are created in the economy. That is to say that for the 82 direct jobs, we would estimate that an additional 164 jobs will be created in the community through the activities of vendors and the purchases of goods and services by the permanent employees.

In addition, the construction of the hotel will produce approximately 266 construction jobs, which are considered basic employment. Applying an employment multiplier of 2.4 for construction jobs, approximately 640 additional indirect jobs will be created in the community.