Plankinton Arcade becoming apartments is significant step in mall's transformation.
Plankinton Arcade becoming apartments is significant step in mall's transformation. Back to the full article.
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I’m sad about his. It’s great for the people who can afford to live there. But this is a public space that will no longer be accessible to the rest of us.
@mbradleyc – It is my understanding that you will still be able to walk through the skywalk/arcade.
I remember when The Grand Avenue first opened back in 1982 and the people flocked Down there like crazy to shop.Grand Avenue went downhill in the 1990s when the parking structure started raising its parking rates.Why would anyone want to pay to park when the other surrounding malls let you park for free?Meanwhile Southridge is facing competition from that new retail development known as 84 South between 84th and 92nd and Layton Avenues.Kohl’s is moving out of Southridge to this new development and Sears is closing up.That means Southridge will be down to three Anchor Stores from Five.And there is also Amazon which has impacted the brick and mortar stores.The Shops of Grand Avenue still had a very viable Food Court and couple of good Coffee Shops and Kiosks.I have not been in there in the last four years but I would like to see the transformation.Is the Food Court being moved to the ground level?
mbradleyc, maybe the reason it’s no longer accessible to the public is that the public was no longer interested in going to those spaces. Also, with empty stores, that’s not a formula for economic viability. People living there produces income.
We didn’t have the Internet in 1982 when the mall reopened. Any shops there will have to be unique enough and interesting enough to draw real live people to them.
They took a vibrant public space and neglected it, refusing to invest in anything that would add value. It all had to be on someone else’s dime.
Now they’ve destroyed it completely, making that beautiful historic building something few will feel welcome in. Their plans are lame and uninspiring. TKWA UrbanLab, in particular, has defrauded the investors — promising them that their half-baked, soulless project will “transform the space. No. It will fail. It has already failed.
It’s what happens when a group of low-energy investors and an unimpressive development team acquire a project just to reap a ROI as quickly as possible with no real investment into it to build something worthwhile. They’ve ignored the neighborhood completely. They’ve never asked resident stakeholders what they’d like to see. They just came up with the latest mediocrity and are PR-ing it as though it’s so “now” and so cool. But it’s really just a lame, visionless piece of dreck that no one in the neighborhood or city will love.
It’s a shame it’s such a prominent location — and such a prominent part of Milwaukee history. Ruined and wasted. RIP.