In the 1990s, a powerful Chamber of Commerce Juggernaut finally made Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace happen after decades of failed attempts. Who was part of this Juggernaut? Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, Democrat Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, Republican Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, local media mogul George Nelson, Evjue Foundation, Madison Gas & Electric, University of Wisconsin, Jerome Frautschi of Webcrafters, Madison Community Foundation, and several other wealthy movers-and-shakers of the region. According to a recent WSJ op-ed, “it was the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, chaired by Bob Walton, president of ABS Global, that pushed to resurrect the lingering plan” to build the center and “mobilized a network of supporters.”
What did the Juggernaut want? Primarily, money. Economic development. Sprinkle into the mix of motives more than a little bit of ego, ambition and lust for power and fame among the powers-that-be. The state wanted hundreds of parking slots downtown for government workers. Some suspect the Juggernaut also wanted to cover up the toxic mess it dumped in Law Park, rather than clean it up according to Clean Water Act laws.
In Orwellian fashion, the Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal happily served as the Juggernaut’s PR agents–and they are still its agents today.
Leading up to the 1992 city referendum on building Monona Terrace over the Law Park Landfill, the Juggernaut and its agents (with an endless pot of financial resources) went to great lengths to trash, ridicule, shame and quash anyone who tried to stand in its way–or even dared to raise questions about the damages the Juggernaut might do to our community, lakes, environment, and public health. The Juggernaut couldn’t care less about these things.
Here’s a bit of that sad and shameful history. The Juggernaut is still alive and well today (different set of actors, same Juggernaut). Activists and dissidents of any political stripe, beware…
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Democratic Madison Mayor and “progressive” media trash Monona Terrace opponents
“Mayor Paul Soglin Monday blasted opponents of the Monona Terrace convention center as people who probably would have opposed building the state Capitol. “It’s the kind of people who probably would have fought the Eiffel Tower in Paris,” he said. “It’s an attitude of selfishness and self-righteousness. They don’t want people to participate in having a viable economic base in the community.” – Wisconsin State Journal, August 11, 1992.
About a year later, when Monona Terrace opponents promised to continue their campaign after the city referendum to build Monona Terrace was passed, Soglin told the State Journal, “It’s about time they get out of the fantasyland.”
[On the right: The Juggernaut.]
Both local newspapers joined in on the ongoing hate-fest launched at Monona Terrace opponents. Dave Zweifel, editor of The Capital Times at the time–purportedly the city’s “progressive” newspaper–dished out one nasty barb after another about Monona Terrace opponents, including accusing critics of spreading misinformation and even outright lying.
For instance, on September 14, 1992, Zweifel wrote, “What rankles me is the deceit and often outright lies that some of the anti-Monona Terrace people feel obliged to use in their zeal to kill the project.” In several columns, he took aim at local attorney and lead center opponent Anne Fleischli, who he said, “delights in spreading rumors in her unique venomous way…”
The Wisconsin State Journal wrote countless promotional pieces for the center—and sometimes disdainful, ridiculing editorials directly aimed at center opponents. An editorial in October 1993, after the Final Environmental Impact Statement was released, accused “hysterical” center critics of not paying attention to scientists and instead issuing volleys of “fact-free” complaints (in other words, opponents were stupid at best, liars at worst).
State Journal editors said opponents “keep reaching into their powder locker and pulling out duds,” pointing to their claims that the EIS was biased and incomplete, and mocking their concerns that “[t]he Law Park site is an old landfill and to build there would release unimaginable toxic horrors into the lake.” The editors confidently quipped that “[n]ot one of these accusations is new, and not one hits its mark.”
Apparently these arrogant WSJ editors were sure that they were on top of all the available data and research on Lake Monona contamination and how building the center might alter the movement and fate of these contaminants and affect the lake and fisheries.
The fact is–these WSJ editors were clueless. They didn’t read any of the reports, talk to scientists or DNR. But they obviously didn’t care about the evidence, instead choosing to mock those who did care enough to look at it.
[It could be worse! In the 1950s, according to this article, Frank Lloyd Wright told the media that a former Madison alder and later Republican state legislator (Metzner) who introduced a bill that prevented the center’s construction should be assassinated–and “Metzner should be assassinated” showed up as a headline in the newspaper. Wright died in 1959, before seeing his dream civic center on the lake come to fruition.]
Who were these selfish, self-righteous, hysterical and anti-science liars opposed to Monona Terrace in the 1990s?
Who were the “selfish” and “self-righteous” opponents of Monona Terrace Soglin publicly accused of living in “fantasyland” in the early ’90s? Who were the hysterics The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal editors wrote were misled and spreading misinformation–if not outright lies? Why did these misdirected (or maybe stupid?) people oppose the center? Were their concerns about toxic chemicals leaching from the landfill hysterical and unscientific?
Or, were center opponents all Republicans, conservatives and right-wingers–prompting the ire of liberal Soglin and progressive Cap Times editor Dave Zweifel?
Well, no, no, no and no.
Hysterical, lying progressive elected officials and citizen experts?
A few weeks after Marv Balousek cited Soglin’s vitriol about the “self-righteous” and “selfish” center opponents, Joanne Haas from the Wisconsin State Journal wrote: “Dane County Supervisor Tammy Baldwin says the proposed Monona Terrace convention center and public place would add to an already heavyweight property tax bill while doing nothing for the city’s problems.” (Tammy Baldwin, now a very liberal, progressive U.S. Senator, was no right-winger.)
Haas also cited Marjorie Colson, leader of a group opposing the project, who said her opposition was also based on impacts to city taxpayers and “what the project would do to Lake Monona.” (Notably, Haas also said Bill Geist of the Greater Madison Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, leading public proponent of the center for the Juggernaut, said everything in center opponents’ brochures, except the spelling of Coulson’s name, was wrong. In other words, in a familiar Juggernaut trope, he accused opponents of lying).
Two obviously progressive, liberal Madison alders, Andy Heidt and Bert Zipperer, publicly opposed the center primarily because it would draw a significant amount of public money away from needed public services (such as libraries) and because of its harmful effects on Lake Monona.
One vocal center critic, Ron Shutvet, a Madison resident and professional engineer, wrote a letter to The Capital Times on October 30, 1992 explaining his reasons for opposing the center: “Why, with all this economic growth, do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in this city? Jails are filling faster than we can build them. Ghettos are growing as fast as trendy, upscale subdivisions. We’ve got problems in this city, and a convention center is not going to solve any of them. Monona Terrace, if built, will leave Madison financially strapped for years to come.” Referring to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement issued that year, he added: “Be forewarned, the Monona Terrace EIS statement lacks a thorough and impartial analysis of the proposed project, the potential impacts, and possible mitigation. We will destroy an urban shoreline park area having potential far beyond this short-sighted vision before us now.”
See footnote [1]
Hysterical, lying Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) employees?
DNR employees submitted many comments during the Draft EIS process raising important questions about environmental effects–as described in a previous post. In the Final EIS, most of these concerns were dismissed with vague assurances, unsupported by any evidence or science. (According to several insider accounts, Governor Tommy Thompson’s Secretary of Administration, James Klauser, had DNR’s environmental manager for the project, who raised important questions during the Draft EIS process, removed from the case).
On December 22, 1993, after the Final EIS was released, DNR employee DuWayne Gebken wrote to the USACE hearing officer James Knowles, as a “concerned citizen.” “I have a number of concerns with the project because of nagging environmental issues, which, in my professional judgement, have not been adequately addressed or resolved.”
The groundwater flow patterns and degree and extent of existing groundwater and sediment contamination, Gebken wrote, had not been adequately established, and a “number of serious potential negative environmental impacts” that “had not been adequately determined,” such as the scouring of sediments and deposition into the lake. “The fate of resuspended contaminated sediment and soils during construction has not been adequately resolved.” He highlighted that “[t]he level of benzo(a)pyrene in groundwater samples collected from one of the shallow monitoring wells exceeds the MCL by over two orders of magnitude.”
Gebken also took aim at the FEIS’ claim of “no measurable impacts.” “Simply stating that contaminated sediment that is disturbed in the lake will settle in deeper portions which contain already contaminated sediment or that resuspended light petroleum products will not have any measurable impact on the lake’s water quality or biotic communities is not adequate to address environmental concerns.” Like others, he raised the question of how driving 1,725 pilings into the lakebed to hold up the center could exacerbate contaminated groundwater movement into the lake and/or towards Well #17, “because of the creation of preferential pathways for groundwater movement…”
Hysterical, lying conservation and fishing groups, environmentalists?
Conservation and fishing organizations opposed the center because of potential effects on lake water quality, fisheries, and fishing access (again, as described in the previous post). Many of the questions and comments DNR employees submitted echoed these concerns.
What about environmental groups? In 1992, Sierra Club lobbyist Caryl Terrell, a city Plan Commissioner who also headed the Environmental Impact Statement committee, publicly supported the center—and center proponents gleefully touted her support as evidence that there would be no environmental impacts.
But the same year, the Sierra Club itself said it was “neutral” on the project, despite Terrell’s support–and after the FEIS was released, the local Sierra Club took a public stance against the center and began distributing “Don’t Pave the Lake” bumper stickers around Madison.
Sierra Club-Four Lakes Group chairman Al Matano, who worked for DNR (as did some other club members opposed to the project), said their “main focus will be to undo what the public erroneously sees as a “done deal”–a perception that was due to the Juggernaut’s PR.
On Sept. 30, 1993, Matano and a Sierra Club colleague, Carl Zichella called the EIS a “whitewash,” saying it didn’t meet the legal standards required by Wisconsin Environmental Policy Act (WEPA—the state version of NEPA). “Lakefront parks and open greenspace make our city special. They are constantly threatened by development and need to be protected. Any development proposal that radically changes a lakefront park, no matter how beneficial should not be permitted to subvert the environmental review process…we cannot sit idly by while a mockery is being made of the environmental review process.”
Hysterical, lying Public?
What about the general public? In 1989, the Monona Terrace referendum was defeated soundly by a significant margin; the majority of Madison voters clearly didn’t want it. But promotion for the center by the Juggernaut was intense. In an Oct. 4, 1992 WSJ survey—more people opposed the center than supported it. After a huge PR push by the Juggernaut, a month later slightly more people supported than opposed the center. The final vote on the referendum was: Yes-51,484 and no-45,666.
So, though the referendum was approved–after a widespread and heavy onslaught of PR to promote the center–still nearly half of Madison voters opposed the center. In my own city district, with a higher proportion of low income, blue collar and middle class people than many other parts of Madison, more people voted against the center than voted for it. (As for county voters, the majority opposed it because they didn’t see how it would benefit them; that’s another long story.) [2]
Based on letters to the editor, many Madison residents felt that the center would primarily benefit privileged people, while middle class and lower class would pay for it. Numerous letters like this one in the Capital Times on July 28, 1992 appeared in the newspapers:
“Suppose we build the proposed Monona Terrace project, which will extend into Lake Monona. Who will pay for this structure? Will the heavy-hitters pushing the project be taxed equally according to wealth? Big money ends up in a foundation, exotic car collections, tax loopholes for the wealthy. The working middle class will pay for and maintain this castle for the rich.”
There’s a lot, lot more to this story, but suffice it to say, at long last, the Juggernaut succeeded in convincing just enough Madison voters to vote “yes” on the referendum on Monona Terrace.
But the battle was far from over with this referendum vote. The Juggernaut still needed to jump through several regulatory hoops to go forward building Monona Terrace over the Law Park landfill.
How did the beleaguered Davids fare in their battle against the Goliath Juggernaut’s dream in the years after the Monona Terrace referendum passed? See Part III of the “What Else Can Hurt Lake Monona” series, coming soon (hopefully).
[1] Ironically, right after the referendum passed, Soglin warned of a city “fiscal crisis”— in an article right above one announcing that the center could open by 1995. (The irony wasn’t lost on city residents, as this “Sound Off” piece in The Capital Times shows.)
[2] The city asked Dane County to contribute $12 million towards the center, but battle to convince the county to cough up these funds went on for a long time after the city referendum passed, and took many twists and turns before the county eventually agreed to contribute the $12 million for the center.
