Milwaukee’s newest trendy neighborhood is likely to become one of its best, and almost certainly its greenest.  The Brewery, an environmentally sensitive restoration and adaptation of historic structures among the decaying wreckage of the former Pabst Brewing Company, is already home to striking residential lofts, a great beer hall, a range of offices, Cardinal Stritch University City Center, and a small urban park.  Soon it will add a senior living facility and the School of Public Health of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Look for more residential and commercial presence, including a boutique hotel, retail and restaurants, over time.

As you can see by the image above, before construction the site was pretty much a disaster.  This has been a major undertaking by any measure.

When NRDC, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the US Green Building Council began taking applications from developers to participate in the pilot program for LEED for Neighborhood Development, The Brewery was one of three among the 200-plus applicants that immediately caught my eye as projects with exceptional potential.  (The other two were New York City’s Melrose Commons and Victoria, BC’s Dockside Green.)  The development plan for The Brewery has now earned a platinum rating under LEED-ND, one of only a few projects to do so.

Here’s why I got excited:  the seven-block, 20-acre project involved the restoration and adaptive reuse of an amazing 26 structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places, surely making it one of the most ambitious historic preservation projects in the country.  It also involved extensive brownfield cleanup; had a great location within walking distance of Milwaukee’s downtown; planned aggressive use of green infrastructure to manage stormwater; planned to set aside some apartments for qualifying low-income families; and included standards for high-performing green buildings.  The Brewery was also strongly supported by the city government in what has been the largest public-private partnership in Milwaukee’s history.

That master plan is now coming to fruition.  The master developer was the late Joseph Zilber, who had built a large portfolio of development both in downtown Milwaukee and in Hawaii.  (His philanthropic portfolio was impressive, too, including a $50 million fund to improve Milwaukee’s low-income neighborhoods.)  A number of the individual buildings within The Brewery site are now being developed by Gorman & Company.

When the site is fully built out, it is expected to include at least 300 homes and some 1.3 million square feet of office and retail property.  My friends in Milwaukee call The Brewery “a great, great project” and say “the more I see at the old Pabst site, the more I like.”  One of them also reports that the old Pabst headquarters building “was used as a setting for one of Charles Bronson’s last movies, Family of Cops 3 (which was mostly filmed in Toronto, but used the Pabst Brewery for some key scenes).”

I can’t wait to see it for myself.  In the meantime, check out the plans and before and after images accompanying this post.  Here’s also a neat music video that was filmed entirely within the Best Place Tavern at The Brewery:

For those of you whose video tastes lean more toward the explicitly environmental, here’s another one, of the bioswales incorporated into the site to filter stormwater.  One of the things I like best about green infrastructure is the way it introduces bits of literally green nature into otherwise hardscape urban sites:

Guest post by Kaid Benfield

Kaid Benfield Director, Sustainable Communities, NRDC; co-founder, LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system; co-founder, Smart Growth America coalition; author, Once There Were Greenfields (NRDC 1999), Solving Sprawl (Island Press 2001), Smart Growth In a Changing World (APA Planners Press 2007), Green Community (APA Planners Press 2009); voted one of the “top urban thinkers” in poll on Planetizen.com and named one of “the most influential people in sustainable planning and development” by the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.

Robert Ruvin, who has yet to start construction on any of his nearby developments, will have a new high-end restaurant opening in his Third Street Pier building in March.  Kincaid’s Fish, Chip and Steak House will occupy the space previously occupied by the Third Street Pier restaurant and give you everything the title indicates for a pretty penny.

A development that is drawing opposition from other businesses on the street is Bootleggers.  A sister tavern of another two-story tavern in downtown Minneapolis, the place will feature live bands, a dance floor, and an outdoor patio.  Other tavern owners on the street voiced their concern through their lawyer who said that Bootleggers will bring "price wars, cheap liquor and bad behavior on the street."  Alderman Bauman supported giving Bootleggers a liquor license, but has expressed concern about the establishment’s potential to be disorderly.  Coming to the aid of Bootleggers, the Minneapolis Police Department submitted a letter of recommendation.  Both a dance and tavern license were ultimately issued at the January 15th Common Council meeting, meaning the tavern’s opening is all but for-sure.

Bootleggers hopes to be open by June.

The most interesting of the developments is the Milwaukee Brat House.  Led by entrepreneur Jack Schaefer, the Brat House will be an old-world German tavern and hopes to be open by March.  The tavern will serve food at both lunch and dinner.

Why is this so interesting?  Because it continues the trend of turning West Town into Little Munich.  A place where Germans can come to and feel right at home, and where Wisconsinites can go to celebrate their heritage.  To start things off right on Old World 3rd Street is the Old German Beer Hall and Mader’s Restaurant.  Over at The Brewery (the Pabst Brewery redevelopment project) there is the proposed Hofbrauhaus Milwaukee in the old Blue Ribbon Hall.

Another reason to be excited about the Milwaukee Brat House is that finally you’ll have a place to take your family and friends to enjoy a delicious bratwurst.  Sure, you can get a brat at a lot of places around Milwaukee, but the brat is just an after thought on the menu.  I don’t want to go to a big fancy restaurant to get a bratwurst, I want to go sit at a table somewhere and look at a menu that is dominated by the notion of the bratwurst.  Plain and simple, feed me delicious meat.

I can’t wait to try out the new places on Old World Third Street, some before others as my wallet allows.

• Mary Louise Schumacher is yet another art person doesn’t think it’s a good idea to build a recognizable 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.