As part of the President’s Speaker Series, Council President Willie Hines Jr has invited Senator Russ Feingold to address the Common Council on September 2nd. There is a reception before the meeting at 8:30 a.m., followed by the meeting at 9:00 a.m. The meeting and reception are both open to the public.

Feingold recently boldly stated his support for protecting the Great Lakes

“These shippers should know that we’ll do what it takes to protect the Great Lakes, and nothing should be completely taken off the table.” Read more.

If one questions the strengths of Feingold’s convictions they need only to look at his adamant opposition to bills like FISA and the Patriot Act where he was labeled a “maverick” for standing virtually alone in protecting the rights of all of us in Wisconsin and the rest of the country.

City Hall
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

What’s new at Milwaukee City Hall? JP Cullen & Sons, the company responsible for most of the work in the restoration project, has proposed to the city a series of changes designed at saving the city time and money long-term.

At the top of the $1.3 million list is to fix the copper on the smaller, northern spire. Consultants have indicated that it will begin to leak in 10 to 15 years. The cost-savings come in fixing it now, while the scaffolding is up, instead of in ten years with new scaffolding.

I don’t have any profound insight or source into if these changes are actually necessary, but there is currently the money in the contingency fund for the Milwaukee City Hall Restoration project to complete the proposed changes. If the changes save money long-term, why shouldn’t the city spend the money up-front?

Whitney Gould took an early retirement buyout from Journal Communications a little over a month ago.  Her send off column was titled "Retiring, not tiring of quality design." Ever since moving to Milwaukee three years ago I’ve enjoyed her reporting on issues involving building design.

My views began to disagree with hers when she started to question the restoration of the former check processing center on the corner of Broadway and State St into the Grohmann Museum, a museum dedicated to the showcasing of men (and women) at work throughout time, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE).

I began to wonder if she cared that the new Grohmann Museum would finally build a book-end for the MSOE campus with the Kern Center, rehab an underused and unattractive building downtown, and build a transition piece from Milwaukee City Hall north to the Kern Center and Park East neighborhood.  Add to that the fact that the financing was entirely provided by Eckhart Grohmann.  In fact Robert & Patricia Kern and Eckhart Grohmann deserve nothing but admiration and applause for their commitment to producing well-rounded engineers in downtown Milwaukee.

To be fair, Whitney Gould does address some of the these facts and does give a fair amount of praise to Grohmann for his contribution.  I do disagree with her on a few things though.

Her appraisal of the building as a cheap impersonation of the style of a bygone era is lacking in insight.  One needs to only walk from City Hall, past the Grohmann Museum, and to the Kern Center to see the bridge the museum forms between the past and present architectural styles.  Unlike many other bland glass buildings in many other cities, Grohmann and the architects at Uihlein Wilson created something distinctly Milwaukee and distinctly MSOE.   The building meshes perfectly with the Kern Center both inside and out thanks to Uihlein Wilson designing both buildings, and forms a southern book end of the MSOE campus on Broadway to match the Kern Center’s north anchor position.  MSOE should be praised for finally developing a physical identity, especially while both Marquette and UWM expand theirs in a much more public fashion.

She, along with other members of the art community, also seem to take offense that no one that works at the museum has true art credentials.  Speaking as someone who has been in the museum many times, the artwork is displayed just as it in any museum and curator John Kopmeier is just as qualified to discuss the content of the collection as anyone with an art degree.

My final point of disagreement with Gould is over her obsession with the Nazi art work in the collection.  She seems to hold this belief that the Nazi-attachment to the artwork is hidden from viewers, it’s not.  It is not outwardly stated that "hey, this painting could contain Nazi slaves", but if you ask someone they will tell you.  They will also tell you that the paintings featuring Egyptians might contain slaves building pyramids.  That the paintings featuring peasant farmers toiled in fields for a king.

The focus of the collection isn’t on whether workers have been treated humanely throughout time, because clearly they haven’t.  The focus of the collection is to honor the work that they have done, because hard work is honorable.

The labeling of the art work as Nazi art or that it might contain slaves would draw attention to the collection for the wrong reasons.

The Man at Work collection on display at the Grohmann Museum seeks not to glorify slavery or oppression, but to take the viewer on a journey through time to demonstrate the amazing feats of hard working men and women throughout time.

I do think somewhere there should be a pamphlet or plaque to explain this to visitors and I’ve heard from reliable sources that it is coming eventually.  That same source has also confirmed to me that they’re not rushing to get it out there because the Journal Sentinel thinks they should, nor do they have any intention of putting plaques next to the paintings that may contain Nazi artwork.

While I understand Gould’s conclusions at a high level, I wish her article would have done more to recognize the fact that Grohmann transformed a building that would have sat empty for years into a viable asset for the city of Milwaukee.

I’ll miss her column in the Journal Sentinel and hope her sendoff column isn’t the last we of her in Milwaukee.

As a special note: I am a student at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, which is why I waited a month to respond to Gould’s column.  Any immediate response would have been emotional and grounded in what I think is reasoned out logic at this point.  Feel free to disagree in the comments.

City Hall
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

Mike Nichols has an article in the Journal Sentinel lambasting politicians for their failings in properly estimating the cost of projects. Nichols gives me the feeling that he’s upset at Mayor Barrett for the expense of the City Hall and the coming need for a lift of the building (covered earlier on this site).

Nichols acts as if City Hall is some giant sink hole that we as Milwaukeeans throw all our money into for no return and that is not an asset to Milwaukee anymore. He imposes upon me that his feeling is that we should have spent millions years ago to remove the wood pilings underneath and replace them with something else. As if the pilings that have lasted more than 100 years were a bad idea from the start, and that people should have known better. That politicians are continually draining Milwaukee of money to fix this building that’s fundamentally flawed. To paraphrase a recent Barrett quote I saw in the Shepherd Express ” it’s not like we’re putting hot tubs in”. Barrett is simply spending the money it takes to keep one of Milwaukee’s greatest landmarks operating and available for future generations.

Nichols apparently disagrees with that idea..

It’s also a place some were already calling outmoded back in 1954, one that is now dwarfed by surrounding buildings and will continue to suck up money that could have been used on something new and inspiring.There’s at least the possibility that if taxpayers knew a few years ago what they were about to spend, they would have considered another, fully accessible, internationally admired Calatrava instead.

We’ll never know because taxpayers have already made the leap that is now about to carry them all the way into the pilings under the basement. Only, I wouldn’t really call it a leap.

It looks more like, without any real discussion at all, they were given a firm, silent, chicken-hearted push.

If he’s so upset about City Hall and the money being spent, why doesn’t someone run for Mayor that is for a new City Hall? The simple reason is that a new City Hall would have the same cost overruns without the old world charm and history of the current building.

The investment in City Hall is one that will preserve one of Milwaukee’s greatest landmarks. You can’t build 100+ year old buildings whenever you want. The building has stood the test of time and helps give downtown Milwaukee a distinct look and feel that is welcoming to visitors and respected by residents.

City Hall doesn’t feature the glass casing like many new urban buildings or the massive parking garage that accompanies many of the large buildings in downtown Milwaukee. The building instead is a tribute to what Milwaukee has grown from, while pointing to the sky to demonstrate where Milwaukee is going to.

As each new building rises around City Hall, the value of the distinct look of the building increases. It is not the similarity of urban buildings that makes a downtown special, it is the difference. Just like the Kern Center and Grace Lutheran Church appear in contrast to each other forming a unique city block, buildings like City Hall and 1000 North Water Street find value in their proximity and difference in appearance.

Sure it’s expensive to repair, but it’s worth every penny.

City Hall
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

Bad news, while Milwaukee City Hall will certainly look good on the outside in due time, it’s going to be a little bit shorter because the building is sinking. In the past 20 years it’s dropped about one and a half inches, so it’s nothing drastic, but still something that will have to be addressed long-term.

The 112-year-old building sits on 25,000 wooden pilings that stretch 27 feet downward into what used to be a swamp. The pilings are under water, which sounds bad but is actually how they’re preserved. Trouble started when some of the pilings dried out. Don’t try this with your basement, but the solution has been to pump more water under the building.

Fixing it apparently would cost about $15 million, which is something whoever is in office will let slide as long as they can to avoid having the expense from repairing the building’s facade and leveling the building out lumped into one sum that is labeled as $100 million fleecing of Milwaukee taxpayers.