Most downtown redevelopments open with a ribbon cutting for a building. Verona's opened with a ribbon cutting for a lawn.
In July 2024, the city and developer Steve Brown Apartments cut the ribbon on Century School Park, a two-acre park built on the site of the old Sugar Creek and New Century School buildings at 309 W. Verona Ave. There was a playground, a bandshell, firepits, and a plaza designed to eventually turn into the city's first chilled outdoor ice rink. What there was not, for the first two years, was much reason to linger afterward. The storefronts meant to wrap around that park sat mostly empty while apartments filled in above them.
That gap is closing this summer, and the proof is a pizza shop.
The City Approved the Park Before It Had Tenants to Fill the Block
The order of operations here is backward from how most people assume commercial districts get built. Normally a developer lines up anchor tenants, then builds the public space around them to justify the investment. Verona did the opposite.
The Common Council authorized staff to work with Steve Brown Apartments on redeveloping the Sugar Creek and New Century School sites back in June 2020, years before any restaurant signed a lease. The park design itself wasn't approved until June 2022, and the city agreed to contribute roughly $750,000 toward construction, likely through tax increment financing, before a single tenant had committed to the retail space next door. The original schedule called for a mid-summer 2023 opening, but the park was still listed as under construction in a January 2024 city engineering report, and the actual ribbon cutting didn't happen until that July. The apartments and the ground-floor storefronts around it were built on the same timeline, but leasing those storefronts turned out to be the slower part.
The bet was that if the city built a real public gathering space first, the commercial tenants worth having would eventually want in. It took about three years to find out if that bet paid off.
The Three-Year Wait Ends With the Largest Ian's Pizza in Wisconsin
Ian's Pizza is opening its Verona location at 303 W. Verona Ave. this summer, right next to Tabby & Jack's Pet Supplies and directly adjacent to Century School Park. At roughly 8,000 square feet, it's the largest Ian's Pizza location in the state, bigger than any of its three existing Madison spots or its three Milwaukee locations. It seats around 150 people when the weather cooperates, with outdoor seating meant to flow straight into the park next door. A second phase, still to come, adds a rooftop patio.
What matters more than the size is the timing. According to a June 2026 update from Ian's, the Verona location was the product of nearly three years of planning, which puts the start of that process at roughly 2023, while the park next door was still under construction and a full year before its ribbon cutting. Ian's didn't wait to see whether the park would draw a crowd. The company committed to its biggest build in Wisconsin while the lot next door was still a construction site.
Managing partner Nick Martin has pointed to Ian's Garver Feed Mill location on Madison's east side, a former industrial building turned food and event hub, as the model. He's said he expects the Mill District to develop "that same energy" that Garver has built over time. The comparison is the whole thesis in one line: Ian's is betting the park does for Verona what Garver did for the east side.
The restaurant will run a cocktails-on-tap bar, a pizza-by-the-slice window, a salad bar, and 12 flavors of Calliope Ice Cream made on site, all features carried over from the Garver location. General manager Jeff Eich has spent ten years with Ian's, including stints managing both the Frances Street and Garver locations, which suggests the company sent someone who already knows how to run a high-traffic, park-adjacent spot.
What's Actually There Right Now
For residents who haven't walked over to the Mill District lately, here's what's already up and running around the park, separate from what's still arriving:
- Century School Park itself, with its playground, plaza, firepits, and bandshell, has been open since July 2024.
- The chilled outdoor ice rink, the first of its kind in Verona, opened in December 2024 and runs seasonally each winter.
- Concerts in the Park, the Verona Area Chamber of Commerce's long-running summer music series, moved to Century School Park from its former home at Harriet Park once the space was ready.
- Mill District Apartments, the residential component from Steve Brown Apartments, has been leasing units since the buildings topped out, with street-facing retail space built in below.
Ian's fills one of the last major retail gaps in that lineup. The June update on the opening pointed to a mid-July target, so if you haven't walked past 303 W. Verona Ave. this month, this is the point where the storefront should actually be running rather than sitting behind construction paper.
What This Means If You Live Near There
If you're already in Verona, the practical takeaway isn't about property values. It's about what's now walkable from your front door.
The Mill District was designed from the start to connect a residential area to downtown through pedestrian and bike paths, with the park functioning as the connective tissue. For two years, that connection existed on paper more than in practice, because there wasn't much reason to walk to the far end of it. A park with a bandshell is nice. A park with a bandshell, a concert series, a seasonal ice rink, and a 150-seat restaurant with outdoor seating is a different kind of destination, and it's the difference between a nice amenity and a place people actually organize an evening around.
The timing also lines up with a broader stretch of civic investment in Verona's public spaces this year. The city held a virtual meeting on August 6 to present the final design for a new skatepark, a separate project from the Mill District but part of the same pattern of the city building shared space and waiting for use to follow. Whether that pattern holds again is worth watching, but the Mill District version of the bet appears to be paying off now that its restaurant tenant is finally about to open its doors.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks these things because you might eventually sell or because a neighbor keeps asking what's changing nearby, this is the kind of shift worth knowing before it shows up in a listing description. MHB Real Estate works Verona and the rest of Dane County every day, and we're always glad to talk through what a stretch of local investment like this tends to mean down the line. Get started.
