Your Daily Guide

🧑‍🍳 begonia. Opens With an Exclamation Point: The much-anticipated new modern Latin restaurant begonia. opened last Friday on Monroe Street in the former home of Kettle Black Kitchen.

• Chef Christopher Lund talked about the restaurant concept on the City Cast Madison podcast. Also, check out social media director Beck Henreckson’s sneak peek on our Instagram page. [begonia., 🎧 City Cast Madison, Instagram]

👞 ‘Mayor of Park Street’ Closes His City Hall: While the Park Street Shoe Repair Shop technically closed in 2018, the building remained open as a gathering spot where retired owner George Fabian, nicknamed “The Mayor of Park Street,” would visit with friends and longtime customers. But the building closed its doors for good last Friday as Fabian, 96, found it increasingly difficult to make it to the shop. [WKOW]

🏈 Nonstop Flights Added For Badgers Games: For football fans who want to root on the Badgers at away games, Dane County Regional Airport is offering new nonstop flights this season. Fans can fly to State College, Penn. for the Sept. 26 game against Penn State. Meanwhile, UW alumni in Los Angeles and New York City can fly into Madison for the Oct. 24 home game against USC. [WMTV]

📰 Tone Madison Founder Launches New Project: Scott Gordon, who started the alternative news website Tone Madison in 2014, has announced a new publication. Yahara Flyer will launch Sept. 1 as a “minimal monthly newsletter” focused on local political commentary. In addition to being distributed by email, the Flyer will have a small print run. Tone Madison ceased publishing earlier this year. [Tone Madison, Yahara Flyer]

🎒Langdon Apartment Building Opens For UW Students: Ahead of the UW-Madison fall semester starting on Sept. 2, the five-story New Langdon apartment building (yes, that's its name) on Langdon Street is now open. All 79 apartments are already leased for the coming school year. [🔒WSJ]

How Voit Farm Will Transform Madison’s East Side

For 160 years, the 65-acre Voit Farm was a fixture on Madison’s east side, an oasis of rural life in a fast-growing city. But the farm buildings were torn down in 2025 to make way for an ambitious redevelopment plan that could include hundreds of homes, new streets, green space, a shared-use path, and more. [Cap Times]

Here’s a closer look at a development that will transform Madison’s east side:

🧑‍🌾 City Meets Country

When the Voit family built their farm in the 1860s, the area was still considered rural. The farm included 23 acres of land dedicated to growing crops as well as a silo, a barn, two houses, wetlands, a fishing pond, and a ready-mix concrete plant.

The Voit family owned the farm until 2021, when they sold the property for over $8 million to the Starkweather development company, which is a partnership between Stone House Development and Threshold Development. Since then, the companies have used tax increment financing from the city to develop housing on the property.

In June, the city of Madison announced plans to buy three acres of the land from the developers for $4.3 million as part of its plan to create more affordable housing. [🔒WSJ, WPR]

🏘️ How Much Housing Will Be Built?

In June, Stone House Development President Helen Bradbury told the city council that around 30 acres of the property could be developed into up to 1,000 units of both market rate and affordable housing, with the rest set aside for wetlands and green space. The development will also include new cross streets to facilitate access, a bike/pedestrian path, a dog park and more.

Facing rising population and home prices, Madison has set its goal of adding 15,000 new homes by 2030, a quarter of those affordable in the long term. The city’s housing tracker says more than 4,300 net new homes have been built since January 2025, with another 4,500 currently under construction. [WPR, City of Madison]

⏱️ What’s the Time Frame?

Starkweather began construction in May, and the entire project is expected to last five to 10 years. Construction on the parcels purchased by the city could start in 2027, officials said. [WPR]