Powell, with her son: ‘It’s like a family unit here at Bayview. If something happens, we’re there for each other.’
Angie Powell was raised by adoptive parents on Madison’s west side. As an adult, she lived on Williamson Street. But no place has felt quite like Bayview Townhouses, where she moved with her son in 2010.
“The west side is not culturally diverse like Bayview or the east side. I was one of the few African Americans living there. I was really happy at 18 to get out of the neighborhood. I still feel like I don’t belong there when I visit my parents,” Powell relates in a new book about Bayview, which broke ground in August on a $50 million redevelopment.
At Bayview, “people actually talk to their neighbors. When I lived with my parents, people could go for years without knowing their neighbors,” Powell adds. “Here, we say ‘Hi,’ and ‘Good morning,’ and pick up new conversations. Next thing you know, I’m knocking on someone’s door and sharing food. It’s like a family unit here at Bayview. If something happens, we’re there for each other.”
Teang Ou had a much farther journey before she made Bayview her home. In 1975, when she was 26, she fled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to a refugee camp in Thailand, before settling in Wisconsin. She moved to Bayview in 2014.
“Since I don’t have a car, other people come to take me to the store or food pantry,” she says in Bayview Portraits, which can be viewed online. “There are many people here who are nice and help me.”
Nina Okwali emigrated from Nigeria to Bayview, where she has raised two sons. “Our neighborhood is safe, which is the most important thing to me. My kids can go play outside and I don’t worry.”
The stories are among 37 collected in Bayview Portraits, by writer, artist and designer Jenie Gao, who has contributed to Isthmus. Each story is accompanied by family portraits by photographer Jamie Ho.
The project showcases what might be Madison’s most diverse neighborhood, with residents who come from Africa, Latin America, Asia and other parts of the United States.
“Some of these people came here as immigrants and refugees,” says Gao. “Some are living in this housing while pursuing advanced degrees and raising children. You have multi-generational households. You have people who are caretakers of children with disabilities.”
The stories and photographs were collected in 2019. For Gao and Ho, it was important that all of the residents had control over the process.
“More than anything I was just there to be able to open the space to conversation,” Gao says. “I wanted people to share what was most important to them…. A lot of the residents haven’t even told their stories to family members.”
Some of the residents tell the story of how they ended up living in Bayview after escaping war or poverty. Others focus on what life is like in the neighborhood, or talk about their children and families. Some of the stories are sad.
“Because I am old, I do have dreams, but I don’t think they will be possible, so I don’t have a lot of happiness,” says Nhia Lee Thao, who was born in Laos and mourns the loss of her family’s traditions. “A lot of people tell me I’m still young, but I can tell my body is older when I garden. Maybe my spirit is still young.”
Gao says that not all of the residents who were interviewed chose to have their stories included in Bayview Portraits, but all of them were given framed copies of the photographs and stories that were collected. “The stories always belong to the storyteller and not those who they tell them to,” Gao says.
The residents also had control over where they were photographed. Some of the Hmong residents wear traditional clothing.
Ho spent an hour and a half with each family, sometimes strolling around the Bayview property. “We would start close to the Bayview Community Center and sometimes we’d get closer and closer to where they lived,” Ho says. “A lot of them have gardens, so we’d go to where they felt close to.”
The $50 million Bayview redevelopment project has been in the planning stages for several years. Bayview sits inside what’s called the Triangle, which is bordered by Regent and Park streets and Washington Avenue, and located a short walk from Monona Bay, Brittingham Park, UW-Madison, and two hospitals. The Triangle also contains an Asian grocery and four aging public housing projects that are all slated for redevelopment. That process is still being planned, while the Bayview redevelopment now begins.
The Triangle is part of the old Greenbush neighborhood, which was decimated by urban renewal programs in the 1960s. It had been a diverse neighborhood of Italians, African Americans, Germans and Jews, when Madison razed more than 200 buildings and displaced more than 1,150 people.
During the Aug. 18 groundbreaking ceremony for Bayview, Ald. Tag Evers — who represents the neighborhood — referred to that troubled history.
“We carry the legacy of past mistakes made in the urban renewal era of the 1960s,” he said. “More than 50 years later, we could have repeated those mistakes…. We could have viewed the Triangle as valuable land for market-based development, displacing a new generation of vulnerable residents. But we did not.”
The Bayview redevelopment is complicated because it will take place in stages, without moving any current residents off site. The first phase of the redevelopment will be construction of a 48-unit, four-story apartment building where there had been a parking lot. Excavation has begun and construction will take about a year to finish, says Alexis London, Bayview’s executive director.
When the apartment building is completed, residents from current townhouses will move into them — either permanently or temporarily — while the old townhouses are demolished and replaced by a 25-unit, three-story apartment building and 57 two-story townhouses.
When the entire redevelopment is completed in 2024, Bayview will have increased in size and density — from about 300 residents currently, to 500, London says. Most of the apartments will be subsidized and there will be 10 market-rate units. The housing will be more flexible, with more one-, two- and three-bedroom units that are accessible to people with disabilities.
There will also be a new, 11,000-square-foot community center — twice the size of the current one. The Bayview Foundation is heading up a $4 million capital campaign to raise money for the center.
The current community center has helped the Bayview community stay connected through the pandemic, London says. The center served as a nexus for meal and grocery delivery and has hosted five vaccination clinics. It also provided remote classroom space for Bayview’s children, who could connect to Wi-Fi in the center and get support.
There have been a few COVID cases in Bayview, but no widespread outbreaks, London says.
The Bayview Portraits project was designed to acknowledge the community that has existed and thrived there for years, London says. “We wanted to do that prior to the redevelopment to really highlight the families that live at Bayview and honor their stories,” London says. “It is one of the most exciting projects we’ve done in our history. It is all about centering residents’ voices and honoring what they need.”