New Facility Reflects Bar's National Reputation of Service

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By Dianne Molvig

In April 1958 Philip Habermann, then State Bar executive director, sat in the Bar's three-room rented office at 122 W. Washington Avenue, Madison, and composed a letter in which he made a few prognostications. At the time, the Bar was only a few months away from moving into its newly constructed headquarters and current location at 402 W. Wilson Street. The new building "will have been enlarged by the addition of a second story in 1970," Habermann predicted, "and in the year 2000 the offices will have moved to new and larger quarters."

Habermann wasn't off by much. A second story to the West Wilson Street building was added in 1969, and if all goes according to plan, the Bar will be moving into a new, larger headquarters in 1999.

As State Bar Past President Steve Sorenson sees it, the new State Bar Center will align the Bar's physical facility with its national reputation. "The Wisconsin Bar is noted as one of the top bar associations in the nation, in terms of its products, its staff, and its commitment to its members and the public," Sorenson says. "But we've been chiseling away at our strengths by the limitations imposed by the physical structure."

Greater demands placed upon the profession in an increasingly competitive marketplace challenge the Bar to offer its members new information and efficient ways to serve clients. These challenges have led to a new State Bar Center - as a place to efficiently address the needs of a growing membership and a gathering place for Wisconsin's legal community.

The new Center will be a 40,000-square-foot facility located in the American Center Office Park near the intersection of Highway 151 and Interstate 90/94 on Madison's northeast side. The ground-breaking ceremony took place on July 2, and the building should be ready for occupancy by next summer.

The Bar's first home

Building a new center is a major step for the Bar today, just as it was 40 years ago. In 1958 when Habermann wrote his projections, the Bar had been in its small rented office a block off the Capitol Square for 10 years. Before that, the Bar had had no home of its own. The Bar was founded in 1878, and during its first 42 years, its headquarters were transient, residing in the office of whoever was serving as the association's secretary. That arrangement continued until 1920, when the state law librarian's office became the Bar's quarters. When Habermann came on board in 1948 as the Bar's first employee, the time seemed right for the association to have its own office.

Eventually that, too, proved inadequate. "We had only 2,200 members when I opened the office," recalls Habermann, a Bar member since 1947, who's now retired and residing in Madison. "But we were admitting 500 to 700 new lawyers a year, as a lot of the post-war classes were coming along. By 1954 or '55, we faced the necessity of renting larger quarters or getting a building of our own."

The decision for the Bar to build its own facility - at that time only the fourth bar organization in the country to do so - won favor with little opposition, as Habermann recalls. Others from that era also remember the decision to build as one having widespread support. Eau Claire attorney Francis Wilcox, a Bar member since 1933, says that owning the Bar building "gave us a sense of solidarity and permanency." Fellow attorney Robert B.L. Murphy of Madison, a Bar member since 1932, adds, "It meant having a place for committees to meet, who before that had to meet in hotels and committee members' offices. We had a place of our own. It was like owning a home, by analogy."

The Wilson Street facility, which included some 3,400 square feet of office space on the main floor plus a full basement, was easily more than six times the size of the rented office Habermann and his four coworkers had moved from. "Our staff almost rattled around in the new building," Habermann says, "and it was wonderful."

Benefits Habermann noticed right away included the availability of meeting space for Bar committees and a tremendous boost in the association's capacity to stay in touch with its then 6,700 members. New equipment for printing, addressing, and mailing - which wouldn't have fit in the old office - allowed the Bar to become a more effective communications hub.

Growth cycles

The staff's perception of "rattling around" didn't last long. Within a couple of years the staff grew to be eight or 10, Habermann recalls. Staff had expanded to serve a growing Bar membership, which took a substantial jump when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered integration of the Bar in December 1958 following a two-year trial period of integration. Thereafter, anyone practicing law in Wisconsin had to be a Bar member. "All of a sudden we had a membership of 6,000 or 7,000," Habermann says. "Thank God for the new building."

By 1966, with a membership of 7,431, needs for additional parking and interior space had become evident. In 1969 a second story was added to the building, which had been engineered to structurally bear another floor, and neighboring houses were purchased, razed, and replaced with parking lots.

New continuing education programs, launched in 1970 to serve the Bar's then 8,302 members, translated into burgeoning needs for space to store materials, which led to construction of an underground storage room below the rear parking lot. Other Bar programs and services also expanded. In 1981, with membership at 12,496, an addition was built, bringing the facility to its current 20,000 square feet. Since then, the building interior has gone through repeated cycles of remodeling and reconfiguring - plus renting outside space for storage and printing - to accommodate a growing Bar, now with 19,582 members, and its staff.

"It's become a honeycomb," says Stevens Point attorney Gerald O'Brien, who chairs the Bar's Facilities Committee. "I got started in Bar activities in the early 1980s, and back then you could get around in there. But little by little over the years, it's become impossible. How does anybody work in there? People's workspaces have been subdivided down to telephone-booth size, and storage space is practically zero. To a person who visited the Center on a regular basis over that period of time, it was really obvious how bad it was getting."

Making cramped office space even more problematic is the nature of the work most of the 85 full-time-equivalent State Bar employees perform, points out Stephen Smay, executive director. "We have a high level of noise and commotion because we have so many people crammed together," Smay says. "A high percentage of people who work at the Bar are on the telephone, coordinating meetings and doing things other than quietly sitting at their desks."

Meeting and conference rooms long ago were sacrificed to create work areas. Many meetings that once could be held at the Bar Center now have to be convened at hotels and other locations, creating inefficiencies for members and staff. "That involves the staff going someplace else," Smay notes, "and getting the materials organized to go someplace else, and paying rental fees."

Moving on

The decision to build a new Bar Center was 10 years in the making, according to O'Brien. He points out that Facilities Committee recommendations in support of a new building date at least that far back. In compliance with the Board of Governors' requests, over the years the committee has explored various options for dealing with the space crunch.

Expanding the current building laterally had to be ruled out because of neighborhood zoning restrictions, and growing upward by adding yet another full floor proved impossible due to structural inadequacies of the older part of the building. After evaluating existing facilities available for purchase and other sites for new construction, the committee recommended and the Board of Governors approved the American Center site earlier this year. (For a more complete account of events leading up to the final decision, see articles in the December 1997 Wisconsin Lawyer and the May 1998 Newsletter.)

Still, some have voiced concern about the Bar moving so far away from the political heart of Madison, the Capitol building. Will the Bar's influence in governmental affairs wane? Smay doesn't believe so, any more than being located at more remote sites has lessened the political clout of other organizations, such as the Wisconsin Education Association Council or the Wisconsin Realtors® Association.

"We are going to have a presence downtown, no question about that," Smay explains, noting that renting a small office has been figured into the expansion project budget. The office will be for occasional use by staff lobbyists and others who have business downtown. "We're not banishing anybody to a satellite office," Smay adds, "and we're not splitting up staff. We're simply going to provide some desk space for people who are downtown for whatever reason, where they can work while waiting for their next appointment. It's not going to be anybody's assignment to be downtown on a full-time basis."

At double the size of the West Wilson Street building, the new facility will relieve the "rabbit warren" atmosphere of the current offices, says State Bar President Susan Steingass. Not only will staff gain the elbow room they need to better perform member services, Steingass notes, but for members themselves the additional space means room for CLE programs, meetings, conferences, social events - and plenty of available parking. Being close to Interstate 90/94 and Highway 151 provides easier access to the Bar Center for out-of-town members. Rooms also will be set aside for out-of-town attorneys who wish to work or conduct depositions while they're in Madison. And a computer training lab will give members a hands-on environment in which to learn about new technology.

"We want to make this a place that's far more usable in terms of space, in terms of location, and in terms of the nature of the facility - for everybody," Steingass says. "I really think the new Bar Center is a move toward inclusiveness. There's more space for everyone, more room to grow. It's good for all of us."

Design highlights

Creating a building design that works for all user groups - including Bar members, other visitors, and staff - was the task set before Milwaukee architect Louis Wasserman, who previously won a design competition for his conversion of the old Skylight Opera into new headquarters for the Milwaukee Bar Association.

The new State Bar Center will have two stories, plus a lower level. The main floor's north wing will have CLE classrooms, with offices in the south wing. The second floor will contain additional offices and meeting rooms. The floor plan will combine open work space and enclosed offices, allowing flexibility to adapt to future needs. The lower level will house one administrative department, plus a printing facility, mail room, order-fulfillment area, exercise room, and commons area. Although the lower level is the building's basement, it will be raised sufficiently to allow in plenty of daylight.

Natural lighting will be a key feature in the building, especially in the reception area, which is a two-story atrium topped with a 26-foot-diameter dome made of translucent glass. Combining aesthetics and practicality, the sky-lit atrium will let in more natural light to help reduce the need for artificial lighting, and thus reduce energy costs. Wasserman's architectural fees are funded in part by a $15,000 "Daylighting in the Workplace" grant obtained from the state.

Overall, the new Center is "modeled after a county courthouse," Wasserman explains. Stone columns in the atrium and outside the main entrance fortify that impression. "We've woven the various elements of the site together with the building," Wasserman adds. "We've provided a tree-planting design that creates a major pedestrian median lined with 'columns' of trees. So, the geometry of the landscape reinforces the geometry of the architecture."

Cost of the facility is projected to be $4.65 million, which will be financed through the sale of the West Wilson Street building, liquidation of some intermediate- and short-term investments, and a fund-raising campaign (please see the accompanying article). A bank loan is available to be drawn on as needed.

Fund raising will reduce the amount of debt the Bar needs to assume. "But the fund-raising effort is not just a way to avoid the high cost of money and the long-term expenditures," Steingass says. "It also gets people involved. The services the Bar offers are for all of us, and as volunteers we can give in a way we can afford. So, the campaign is both to make the Center less expensive in the short and long run, and to involve members to the extent they're able. We want people to know and feel that this is a building for everybody."

Wisconsin Lawyer