BusinessWatch: You have a great resume. What brought and attracted you to EMI in 2003?
Susan Springman: Greg Rice, EMI’s CEO, personally recruited me to join EMI. I was an administrator for the Division of Buildings and Police Services at the State of Wisconsin Department of Administration at the time. My division managed most state-owned buildings, including the State Capitol, 5 million square feet of state leases in private buildings and security provided under the State Capitol Police Department. I had moved from a commercial development and leasing environment
in the private sector to take this public sector position because it offered me an opportunity to manage a large real estate portfolio and agency which I thought would be a great learning experience. I always intended to return to the private sector at some point, and the opportunity Greg offered me as president of EMI, and also to help him develop University Square, attracted me to take the position.

BW: The highly visible University Square project is slated to open next month. How’s that coming along? What are some
of the highlights?
SS: In August, the private student rental housing portion of University Square opens. Greg asked Steve Brown of Steve Brown Apartments to partner with him on this portion of the project because EMI’s core business is more commercial, not residential. Steve Brown had years of experience in the student housing business, so this was a good match. The
retail and retail parking portion of the project is owned and managed by EMI. Some retailers will open in August or soon thereafter, including Walgreen’s, an Aveda store, Vici Capelli School, various specialty stores and a 20,000-square-foot food court with eight food vendors which is on the second floor of the building overlooking University Avenue and the East Campus Mall. It is going to be a great location with an open-air seating venue, big screen TVs and wireless Internet — a fun gathering place for students and the public. Most retail should open by mid-2009. The third piece of the project is 250,000 square feet owned by the University of Wisconsin, which will open during winter break in 2008-‘09. It will consist of the Student Health Center, Student Activity Center and Student Services. EMI is the developer of the total project, which is about 1.1 million square feet in size, and will manage the property when completed.

BW: What have been some of the challenges to this project? What will it offer the city and the University once complete?
SS: The biggest challenge is controlling construction and financing costs and dealing with a changing economy when a project takes so many years to plan and construct. A project of this magnitude takes years of planning before construction can even begin. Greg’s father, Gordon Rice, developed the former retail center named University Square, and it was Greg’s idea to redevelop it into a more dense, mixed-use development that would provide multiple uses/services to the market in that area. He began discussions with the university on that idea in the late 1990s. When I joined him in 2003, we formalized his discussions with the University and determined the ultimate mix of uses so the project could be designed. Those uses
changed several times during our discussions and negotiations with the state. At the same time, construction prices were starting to escalate rapidly with world demand for materials and the oil crisis. Interest rates also started to rise. It was a great challenge to build a feasible project in that environment.
Greg had put together the team of Potter Lawson Architects and Findorff Construction, and they worked with us from day one on planning this project. The University was going to be a tenant in the building originally, but evolved into an owner/partner.
Later, Steve Brown was added on the housing portion. We were able to get Findorff to build the project in about two-and-one-half years, no small feat for 1.1 million square feet with little area to stage.

BW: How can other builders and developers use University Square as a model for future redevelopment?
SS: A mixed-use project of this scale is more common in larger urban markets. It is difficult to assemble a large enough piece of land to build this square footage, so land assemblage is critical to this kind of density. Greg was fortunate to have a well-located, large piece of real estate. Developers have to already own, acquire land or partner with adjacent property owners as Greg did with the University to add their land to the mix. To develop a mixed-use project of this size, a developer has to have the ability to own, hold and acquire enough land, patience to work through the hundreds of meetings required for approvals, willingness to change the first idea he/she might have had and adapt it to a change in the marketplace or economy that
may have occurred since the project’s initial conception. Because this project is both downtown and on the campus, we are able to address two markets. You could develop this concept in a large scale or smaller scale in other urban/campus locations.

BW: Shifting gears to the Air Park Business Center, how, in your opinion, has the airport impacted area business?
How can we continue to develop this amenity and area into the future?
SS: EMI owns a half dozen office buildings and several office/warehouse buildings in what we call the Air Park Business Center.We are just one of dozens of office and service buildings located in the area that was formerly known as Truax Air Field. I grew up on the north side of Madison and was surprised myself to find out how diverse the business sector
was in this area. When the county acquired this land, they had the foresight to lease land to private users who would create jobs and a tax base for both the city and county. Revenue from the land lease is income for the airport.
We have found this location to be a wonderful business environment. The buildings are affordable and flexible in terms of size, particularly for smaller businesses. There is a bus line and easy access for those who travel outside Madison. Plus you can get downtown and other parts of the region easily. For businesses that have employees who travel by air, this is an ideal location. But the airport also has established a free trade zone, which could be marketed and utilized better as well.

BW: Any other projects on EMI’s horizon that you can share with our readers?
SS: For now, EMI is concentrating on making sure that the lease up at University Square is successful and that construction details are done in a timely and proper fashion. Even though portions of the project open in August,there is still a lot of behind-the-scenes work that has to be done into 2009. We have about one million square feet of other real estate we continue to lease and manage, so for now we haven’t decided what the “next” development project is. We have some ideas, but aren’t in
a rush to do anything until we see when the economy begins to turn.

BW: Planning, development and redevelopment continue to be hot topics in the area. In your opinion, can the needs of all sides ever be met? How, as a city and region, do we better facilitate smart planning and development?
SS:We are fortunate that in Dane County, we already have some good Smart Growth planning. Many of the villages, cities and towns surrounding Madison started planning for their communities before it was mandated by the state. Those that didn’t do so early have done so since. All of Dane County, not just Madison, is pretty progressive in that sense.
We have smaller areas like Westport, Vienna, Springfield and Dane that want to keep their rural heritage intact. Waunakee has a very progressive master plan that keeps growth compact like an urban area. Middleton, Verona and Fitchburg are small cities in and of themselves. The question is how all these communities work as a region in the future with housing, jobs and business growth?
Given rising gas prices, will that affect peoples’ decisions on where they live and work? I think so. And what I am seeing is that the communities surrounding Madison want to be more self-reliant so that residents don’t have to travel into Madison for every need. You have health care that has moved to those communities, retail of some major significance is outside Madison now, and so are business parks where companies locate and provide jobs. Linking everyone from a transportation standpoint will be essential. My personal opinion is that the shorter and midterm answer to transportation is a rapid bus system. Rail may come, but it will take longer, needs a lot of funding, which is scarce, more density and countywide support.
There may be some limited application of rail mid-term, but the politics and financing will be challenging. Plus rail is not as flexible as a bus system, and it is planned to be a ground system, which could cause considerable congestion on our roadways. Those issues, plus funding, need to be worked out. I think communities outside Madison will be more likely
to support funding an RTA if they can see a benefit to them early on. But then again, I am not the decisionmaker in these discussions and anything can happen.

BW: Time for the crystal ball. Being so invested in this community, what are your predictions for growth of the region
20 years from now? 50?
SS: I think Dane County will continue to grow, with a greater percentage of growth outside the city of Madison than within. That said, I think the pace of growth will be much slower than predicted five years ago, and you will see more infill and denser developments, even in communities like Middleton, Verona, Fitchburg and Waunakee, due to sustainability and energy concerns. I would like to see Madison not only continuing its efforts to provide affordable housing, but recognizing the importance of increasing its population of young families and people of middle and above incomes. I think this is critical to the
school system, which is a predictor of a community’s economic health.