The answer, George Austin says, was, "It had a chance to work." With that, Mayor Soglin went public. In July of 1990, he announced the appointment of a broad-based 28-member blue-ribbon commission -- a large group even by Madison standards -- to study the Wright plan and determine if it could be adapted for a modern-day meeting facility. The commission needed a leader: Somebody on point from the private sector who could talk dollars and cents, provide leadership and, in general, inspire confidence among the different factions that needed to come together to make the Wright center happen. Soglin chose George A. Nelson, vice president of administration and finance for WISC-TV and the Evening Telegram Company -- an inspired choice. As the mayor told The New York Times in 1995: "In the past, if it was a Frank Lloyd Wright facility, the business community was against it." Nelson got the factions to work together. "You had the chief executives of utility companies and labor leaders working with art students and university professors to make this thing happen," Soglin said. Probably neither George Nelson nor anyone else knew they were signing on for a five-year ride. Nelson's commission -- made up of prominent and disparate Madisonians including Jerry Frautschi, Mary Lou Munts, Mary Lang-Sollinger, and Fred Mohs -- studied the feasibility of a Wright-designed center, reporting to the Madison City Council in the fall of 1991 that it was indeed feasible ... as long as a number of financial building blocks could be put in place. A big one came almost immediately when Governor Tommy Thompson, to the surprise of some, championed the idea and didn't blink at the proposed state contribution of $18 million toward construction. Thompson's support was critical. Other monies followed. The private sector dollars -- budgeted at $8 million -- got a boost when Capital Times publisher Fred Miller announced in late 1991 that the William T. Evjue Foundation (named for the paper's late publisher) was making a $3 million grant to the center. The Madison Community Foundation came through with $1 million. By 1992, then, the dollars for the Wright project were actually starting to add up -- but there was still the matter of some $12 million in city funds and that meant a referendum for Madison voters.