Greg Rice is scurrying about like the owner of a brand-new home, checking all the details and looking for any signs of shoddy workmanship.
“I wonder what happened here?” asked Rice, noting a small chip in the corner of a concrete planter on the massive, fourth-floor rain garden that captures stormwater from the new University Square. Upstairs on the top floor of the Lucky Apartments portion of the project, Rice is curious about an 18-inch-ring stain on the hallway carpet.
But you can excuse Rice, 53, for being a little nervous. He’s overseeing the final phase of the largest mixed-use project ever built in downtown Madison just as some 40,000 students start pouring onto the UW campus and the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of recession.