During the debate over The Edgewater’s redevelopment, we were told by developer Bob Dunn and The Edgewater advocates that Dunn and his family, as well as investors Jerry Frautschi and Pleasant Rowland, would be living in the upper floors of the hotel and that we should be assured they would not tolerate unacceptable noise from the terrace. Years have gone by and they have not moved in, and other condominium owners are only part-time residents with primary residences elsewhere.

Seriously, can you imagine Rowland, one of Madison’s most tasteful and sophisticated people, putting up with all of that racket? But, no, the logic in the editorial that hotel guests would not put up with the music should be persuasive. But somehow it is not. I received an email from an alumni, whose son is in graduate school here. He stayed one night at The Edgewater. “To my great annoyance,” he wrote me, “I was assigned a room over the terrace and was not advised that there would be a very noisy event under my window on Saturday evening. When I returned to my room on Saturday evening after having dinner with my son, the noise was unbearable. I called the front desk and complained, and they offered to change my room, which they did about 30 minutes later. In short, the hotel is not a credit to the Madison Downtown community, which its predecessor clearly was. It makes me sad.”