To be honest, we don’t know exactly. But we do know that they’ve proposed 8 sites, and we’ll break down each one to determine which one we think might be the best. Our best and worst rankings are available at the bottom of the article.

Site #1 - The Prospect Mall
Actual Location: Prospect Avenue between Ivanhoe Place & Kenilworth Place
What’s There Now: Former Prospect Mall, currently empty, along with surface parking lot across Farwell
Note: We have heard that this project would potentially only use the east side of Prospect, the surface parking lot and Qdoba. We are unsure how it would integrate into the currently empty mall. If this is true, it could change our ranking (see bottom of article) of the site.  UPDATE We contacted Boulder Venture to clarify this question but they are unable to comment on the proposal at this time.

Pros

• Close to other dorm (Kenilworth) and close to campus
• On an existing bus route (30)
• Uses a currently unused property
• Would help area businesses by delivering 500 new customers
• Would please students to be close to other students

Cons

• Would create another cluster of students possibly creating more neighborhood backlash

Site #2 - Near Brady Street Site
Actual Location: 1744 N. Farwell Avenue, Southeast Corner of North Farwell Avenue and East Royall Place
What’s There Now: Surface Parking Lot

Pros

• Would deliver 500 new customers to Brady Street area
• Replaces existing surface parking lot
• Close to entertainment for students
• On existing bus route (30)

Cons

• Would be furthest dorm from campus

Site #3 - Near Beerline Site
Actual Location: 1887 N. Water Street, just west of Humboldt Avenue
What’s There Now: Empty Warehouse Building, former home of Pro Graphics Inc

Pros

• It’s near the Good Life which is fun to eat at? (and Wolskis)
• It’s a short walk to Brady Street (although not as close as the other site)
• Next to river

Cons

• Would draw continued opposition from nearby condo owners
• Site could be better capitalized by condo development
• Next door to empty Gallun Tannery (wouldn’t necessarily encourage condo development there)
• Close to an existing transit route (10), but transit route does not go through campus
• Awkward walk to Riverview, despite being just across the river
• Potentially difficult spot for shuttle bus to pick-up/drop-off from.

Site #4 - Hometown Gas Station
Actual Location: 1436 North Avenue
What’s There Now: Abandoned gas station

Pros

• On North Avenue near entertainment district
• On existing transit route (21)
• Inbetween both Riverview and Kenilworth dorms
• Next to river
• Easy for current UWM Shuttle to stop here on route from Riverview

Cons

• Would draw ire of many residents because of Milwaukee River Overlay District due to its spot along river
• Nearby residents would certainly raise a fuss about parking, congestion, regardless if it were true or not.

Site #5 - Humboldt Avenue Site
Actual Location: 2628, 2650, and 2660 North Humboldt Avenue, just south of Center Street
What’s There Now: Collection of buildings

Pros

• On existing bus route that goes downtown, but not to campus (10)
• Next to river
• Would integrate well if Riverview shuttle went up Humboldt, then down Locust to get to campus
• Would help revitalize businesses along Center Street

Cons

• Would draw ire of many residents because of Milwaukee River Overlay District due to its spot along river
• Close, but yet not, to Riverview dorm, awkward walk
• Not a good connection to campus without UWM shuttle
• Would certainly irritate neighbors with noise of freshman students walking to keg parties in the area

Site #6 - Holton Terrace
Actual Location: 2825 N. Holton Street, at the intersection of Holton and Locust
What’s There Now: Green space adjacent to Holton Terrace public housing

Pros

• Would utilize what is currently underutilized land, which long-term may be catalytic to other development along Locust and Holton

Cons

• Perception of being next to public housing facility would be negative, regardless of how safe the facility is.
• Neighborhood would likely reject students and be irritated with their noise
• Not near any retail or entertainment districts

Site #7 - Tracks Tavern and Grille
Actual Location: 1020 E. Locust Street
What’s There Now: Tracks Tavern and Grille, surface parking lots, and a few apartments

Pros

• Would replace surface parking
• Would be near existing new development (Alterra Coffee on Humboldt)
• Would be catalytic to other development near the intersection
• Would integrate well if Riverview shuttle went up Humboldt, then down Locust to get to campus
• Would likely not generate resistant from neighbors
• Connected to campus during school year with bus (60)
• Next to two parks

Cons

• Awkwardly close, but yet separated from main campus
• Not near other entertainment/retail options other than Alterra [there are some bars on locust]
• Next to two parks that are overly big and underlit at night, might not be well used by students at night out of fear

Site #8 - Heinemann’s Commissary
Actual Location: 1300 E Locust Street
What’s There Now: Heinemann’s Commissary located in a small building

Pros

• Would integrate well if Riverview shuttle went up Humboldt, then down Locust to get to campus
• Connected to campus during school year with bus (60)

Cons

• Small lot, tall building
• Would likely draw opposition from residents over Milwaukee River Overlay District despite tall public housing facility next door
• Along busy street
• Close, but awkwardly far from main campus because of long Locust Street bridge
• Would not be positioned well to generate neighboring new development
• Students would be fairly isolated, with longer walks to any retail or entertainment.

Best sites currently for the new UWM freshman dormitory

1. Prospect Mall Site
2. Near Brady Street Site
3. Hometown Site

Worst sites currently for the new UWM freshman dormitory

1. Near Beerline Site
2. Holton Terrance
3. Humboldt Avenue Site

View Larger Map

Kinnickinnic River Spillway
Originally uploaded by Retinal Fetish

Julie Lawrence at OnMilwaukee.com drew my attention to this excellent community development taking place along the Kinnickinnic River on the south side of urban Milwaukee, the Kinnickinnic River Trail. The trail is in the early stages of development and will have a southern terminus at the river and 6th Street (near its intersection with Cleveland St) and at Water St and 1st Street on the northern end.

The trail, while still in its infancy, will hopefully include a restoration of the river to a more natural state with the removal of the concrete channeling.

Like many other developments occurring in Milwaukee (the Riverwalk, Menomonee Valley restoration, and the Beerline neighborhood come to mind), the KK River Trail is just one of many ways in which Milwaukee is learning to embrace its natural assets. The developments are all the more special because they’re actual functional ways to move around the city without a car, which is due in large part to the dense development surrounding the rivers.

Groundwork Milwaukee has provided a PDF with all you could ever want to know about what was discussed in planning for the trail.

I’ll try to learn more over the next few days as to what the actual status of the trail is (it’s a little bit hard to figure out with the information online).

I took the map out of the PDF and put it online as a JPG image in case you wanted to see the proposed route.

Although development within the Beerline corridor has slowed there is still ongoing construction. The Edge which is just now starting to rise out of the ground intends the first phase to be completed by November 2008. The Bluff Homes construction is nearing completion and more than half of the units have been sold. The completion of these developments during this market downturn show promise for the Beeline.

Further in spite on the slowdown the future is still looking up for the Beerline as two condominium developments and additional Riverwalk expansion are still in the works. Specifically the potential developments include the Pleasant Street Market and Riverboat Landing. The most recent public report regarding Pleasant Street Market dated June 30, 2007 indicated it was undergoing final design review and obtaining permits but as of today no development of the site has occurred. The Riverboat Landing will have 67 residential units and two retail units once built. Currently only 14 residential units are under contract and with the broader residential market in a backslide it is likely that at least another 20 units will need to be sold prior to breaking ground. Additionally the design of the Brewers Point Apartments Riverwalk was approved during the September 10, 2007 City Plan Commission meeting and construction should begin soon. The development of the Beerline has been one of Milwaukee’s success stories in recent years and if the potential developments move forward it will be on track for continued growth in the future.

Articles + Reference

Pleasant Street Market
Nehrings are in the market for a new venture
Owners of Upscale Food Stores Plan New Grocery Along River Near Brewers Hill

The Edge
Construction gets under way on riverfront condo project

Links from the Milwaukee-informationsphere

• Mary Louise Schumacher is yet another art person doesn’t think it’s a good idea to build a recognize landmark that will increase pedestrian traffic in downtown Milwaukee.
• Hofbrauhaus Milwaukee, a proposed German beer hall and restaurant, is likely coming next The Brewery development at the old Pabst brewery in Blue Ribbon Hall after the settlement of a lawsuit involving Brew City Redevelopment LLC with the complex’s former owners, WisPark LLC. The article makes no mention of the existing Old German Beer Hall and how urban Milwaukee is delightfully reinventing itself more in the fashion of a city like Munich, Germany.
• Robert Kern, of Generac fame and fortune, is powering a change in the way the state handles engineering education through his foundation (Kern Family Foundation). Two urban Milwaukee schools are at the center of this in MSOE and Marquette, through the recruitment of Project Lead the Way students form high schools and their participation in KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network). Urban Milwaukee would like to applaud the efforts of Robert Kern for his visionary leadership in truly investing in the future of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the entire Fresh Coast economy and education system.
• The Journal Sentinel takes a look at how you can reduce your power consumption and what effects it will have. Absolutely worth your time to read.
• Dave Reid takes a look at the Kane Commons development and gives us a construction update of the Breakwater Condos and The Residences on Water.

Hank Aaron State Trail 5K Run/Walk
Originally uploaded by carrier

Yet another sign that logic is prevailing and the city of Milwaukee is improving, the Menomonee Valley Partners have announced the construction of a pedestrian tunnel and bridge to link up the Menomonee Valley with the bordering Silver City neighborhood to the south.

While the sides of the valley are not unreasonably steep, they’re lined with pedestrian barriers. On the north side of the valley you have Interstate 94 blocking access for pedestrians, and on the south side you have the Menomonee River and railroad tracks. Jobs exist in the valley and more are coming, but getting people that don’t own cars to the jobs has been a challenge so far.

Previous attempts included the idea of attaching an elevator to the 35th Street viaduct that crosses the valley and having people use the small staircases attached to the 35th and 27th Street viaducts.

While the idea of a massive elevator sounds exciting, it doesn’t seem logical to have people standing out on the middle of a bridge in the winter waiting for an elevator when they could be walking along a path on the valley floor.

In short, this is the information you need to know about why this development makes sense…

“For the people who are living in the neighborhood right around the (Menomonee) Valley to access the jobs or recreational value of the valley, it’s about a three-mile walk,” said Menomonee Valley Partners Executive Director Laura Bray. “This will make it less than two blocks.”

Linking central city residents with jobs through public/private development partnerships is just one of the many reasons that I believe that urban Milwaukee is on the right track.

You can see this kind of "intelligent design" with developments like the 6th Street Viaduct, the Canal Street extension, and perhaps most impressively the Marsupial Bridge under the Holton Ave Viaduct.

Construction won’t actually start until 2009, which is unfortunate, but the connection will undoubtedly be of benefit to both ends of the connection. CSA Commercial is renovating a building on the Silver City neighborhood-side of the tunnel to be turned into an office building, which will help kick-start development in the area.

The Kane Commons project located at 1142 to 1158 East Kane Place is another of many Milwaukee area projects utilizing green building concepts. Recently projects such as The Brewery announced various green building components such as capturing and processing all of the rainwater within The Brewery complex. The Edison Green project will feature many green features such as solar panels, wind turbines, and car-sharing. And the Kane Commons project will utilize straw bales as a key building material and geothermal heating throughout the buildings.

The green features in the Kane Commons project should reduce utility bills, generate less of a carbon footprint and offer additionally quality of life benefits. The straw bales construction has an insulation R-factor in the range of R30 to R50 which significantly outperforms typical home construction. Unlike typical construction materials, straw bales are highly renewable which reduces the lifelong carbon footprint. Additionally it offers additional advantages such as improved fire resistance and sound proofing. The geothermal heating system will utilize the Earth’s natural warmth to heat the buildings requiring less generated energy thereby reducing bills and pollution. This project’s green efforts, much like the Edison Green project’s green efforts, may influence future developments in Milwaukee to look for new green ideas.

Articles

Long-awaited Kane Commons moving ahead
Building homes with a purpose
Kane Commons: Green Development on Lower East Side
Proposed “Green” Development to Overlook the River at E. Kane Place
Pragmatic Construction: Kane Commons

Marsupial Bridge
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

The Brookings Institution recently ranked America’s most walkable big cities. Milwaukee didn’t crack the top 25 unfortunately, but consider this…

However, the Brookings report itself has some major flaws. I know I’m going to sound like a major hater here, but somehow out of 30 metropolitan regions nationwide, the Miami-Ft Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro ranked 8th place – above metros like New York and Philadelphia! For anyone who knows anything about cities and metropolitan regions, this should immediately raise a red flag.

So how is such a ranking possible, you ask? It comes down to Brookings’ flawed methodology for calculating walkable areas in each metro. Instead of calculating the percentage of area that is walkable in each metropolitan region, the Institution instead chose to go by arbitrary districts or neighborhoods, which vary considerably in size and functionality. For example, both Center City, Philadelphia and Coconut Grove, Miami were chosen as walkable locales within their respective metros. However, despite Center City being much, much larger than Coconut Grove, the two areas count the same…. Read more from Transit Miami

Milwaukee, while far from the ranks of Chicago and New York in terms of walkability, has made significant strides in the past few year. Things like the Marsupial Bridge, Oak Leaf Trail, and Riverwalk are significant and growing assets that signal the emergence of a pedestrian culture in urban Milwaukee.

It’s hard to find developments today in Milwaukee that aren’t pedestrian friendly. Developments like The Residences on Water, The Catalyst, and Edison Green all replace parking lots or underused gravel lots with intelligently-designed, sustainable towers that only will increase the pedestrian-centric transformation underway in Milwaukee.

Plus, it’s hard to ignore a city that has willingly removed an urban freeway to replace it with pedestrian-minded buildings.

So yeah, Milwaukee isn’t on a flawed list today, but the community at-large is working to set the standard for tomorrow.

Marsupial Bridge
Originally uploaded by repowers

While the Beer Line railroad trunk has been gone from the Beer Line neighborhood for a long time, the last legitimate piece of the stretch has finally been given regulatory approval to close. With the closure of a 2.4 mile stretch by Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, all that is left of the famous line is 1 mile.

In its heyday, the six-mile stretch hauled more freight than many cross-country railroads. It linked foundries, machine-tool shops, lumberyards, tanneries and makers of engines, castings, shoes, cardboard, cans, batteries, furniture and sausages. The north side line also connected three of the nation’s biggest breweries; during summer peaks in the 1950s, the Beer Line carried up to 270 boxcars each day with nothing but kegs and bottles. Read more…

All things considered, you can’t be upset that the line is slowly being removed. The portion removed in the Beer Line neighborhood clearly has created a lot of land for quality development. I would expect the same to happen with the latest 2.4 mile stretch over time. Wisconsin & Southern clearly isn’t fleecing the city’s industries either, they’re simply not in need of large industrial shipping anymore.

The only thing consistent in life is change. Apparently that rule applies to urban Milwaukee too.

Milwaukee Ale House Viewed From the Milwaukee River
Originally uploaded by purpleslog

A anti-capitalism, pro-lobbying law was snuck into the state budget. It had been protested already this summer by Milwaukee Ale House owner Jim McCabe when the idea was floated originally.

I’ll let you form your own opinion, but I can’t figure out a reason why this law should exist.

Under current law, a Wisconsin brew pub can operate only two locations if it produces more than 4,000 barrels of beer a year. The budget proposal lifts that production ceiling to 10,000 barrels and allows up to six locations. That change was sought by Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co., a Madison-area brew pub operator that opened its third location earlier this year.

Meanwhile, McCabe’s new brewery, at 613 S. 2nd St., is designed to ramp up production of the Louie’s Demise brand for sale in packaged form at liquor stores and other retail outlets. Other regional craft brewers, including Chicago-based Goose Island Beer Co. and Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Co., started as brew pubs, and McCabe wants to follow that same path.

However, the new law "caps our overall growth," he said.

Also, the new law bans a licensed brew pub operator from also owning a brewery that produces beer for packaged sales, said McCabe and Russ Klisch, president of Lakefront Brewery Inc. McCabe said that might force him to convert the 2nd St. brewery into a brew pub - a move that would require a large investment.

Klisch said he fears the production limit might require him to close Lakefront Palm Garden restaurant, which operates at his brewery, 1872 N. Commerce St. Lakefront Brewery this year will produce around 9,600 barrels and is expected to exceed 10,000 barrels in 2008, he said.

The new provision could be changed by Gov. Jim Doyle through the line-item veto process, McCabe said. Another possibility is filing a lawsuit to challenge the law, he said.

The proposed limits initially surfaced this summer and are supported by some of the state’s craft brewers and brew pub operators. The changes also are supported by the Wisconsin Beer Distributors Association Inc., whose members buy beer from breweries and then sell it to retailers.

The law could help fend off possible lawsuits challenging the lack of a state brew pub license, association officials say. The wholesalers group also said the 10,000-barrel limit allows plenty of room for brew pubs to grow.

The only places I can imagine that are in favor of it are Great Dane and Water Street Brewery because they don’t appear to be interested in selling their beer off-site via production at a brewery.

I can’t figure out why this law exists. It seems anti-business and anti-logic to not allow Milwaukee’s (and Wisconsin’s) only locally-owned breweries from expanding their operations in ways that increase employment and generate tax revenue. They produce a quality product and are assets to both the restaurant and brewing community.

Urban Milwaukee supports the repeal of this ridiculous law!

For a quite sometime it appeared this project may not ever get built as no progress had been taken place on the site but finally progress can been seen at the site as work has begun on the foundation. This is great news as The Edge includes one of the missing Riverwalk pieces needed to complete the Beerline section and will include the cleanup of a contaminated property. Additionally this project has a creative design and once completed will have 133 units running in the range of $200,000 to $300,000.

To follow this development I’ve started a flickr set, The Edge that I will update with new pictures to keep track of the progress.

Articles
Chicago firm plans condos near Milwaukee River
Condo developers to receive brownfields grant