First let’s step back to the origination of the problem. What I witnessed on Friday night first hand (and what everything I read seems to agree happened Saturday) was that teenagers began to “cruise” (drive in loops, while hanging their heads out of the window, yelling, and all sorts of other stuff that the DMV would advise against) up and down Old World Third Street from Juneau Avenue to McKinley Avenue. They would frequently block these intersections and the whole area had a general sense of lawlessness to it (I biked through around midnight on Friday, I’ll vouch for the lawlessness).

The general lawlessness of cruising spilled over into the area near the intersection of Highland and Old World Third Street, where the person ended up getting shot in the foot. I witnessed this first hand Friday night, and all indications point to that same situation occurring Saturday night. The illegal activity (cruising is against the law in Milwaukee) outside of the festival, fueled insanity within the festival.

This behavior was further enabled by the vacant Park East land where the Sydney Hih building and Gipfel Brewery sit (and Ruvin is to develop upon). In fact on a night where parking is scarce, very few cars made use of the Park East land to park in, and the few that did were certainly illegal.

If Ruvin was able to start construction on that lot already, none of this probably would have happened. The north end of the festival would have been calmer because cruising wouldn’t have taken place near the festival because the lot would have been blocked off. Why wouldn’t cruising have taken place? The cruisers were using the largely empty lot to turn around.

Now don’t misinterpret my article as saying Ruvin was at fault for the fiasco, he is certainly not. But if Ruvin had fenced off the entire block (Milwaukee County may have to do this since he technically hasn’t executed his option to purchase), it would have made the corridor along Old World Third Street a little less friendly for cruising. It also might have encouraged law enforcement to stand at that end of the festival (even though it is technically outside the edge of the festival) and discourage and ticket cruisers.

It would be hard to convince Scott Walker and company to spend money when they’re not getting any in return though, so why not for the night turn it into a parking lot? Nearby parking garage owners wouldn’t be opposed to this, since they’re owned by the city. The city and county could earn some money to help pay for police officers for the event by charging for parking. Suburbanites in town for the festival would have paid for the convenience, they don’t seem to enjoy the concept of street parking.

RiverSplash will certainly continue next year. If I was in charge (paging Robert Bauman) I would do the following things.

1. Install lights above buildings to illuminate the streets (this is done in Madison during Halloween on State Street and makes it feel safer and more welcoming late at night). Cars usually provide this, but are clearly absent during RiverSplash.

2. Patrol the areas outside of RiverSplash, I felt that there were plenty of officers inside the festival, but not enough on the fringes.

3. Institute a bottle fee at bars so that drinkers pay a deposit and earn it back for their bottles. This should reduce garbage and eliminate the urge to turn bottles into frisbees and footballs. When I studied in Kassel, Germany they made good use of this policy during festivals and it seemed to keep garbage bins largely empty.

4. Look at traffic flows, especially around Highland Avenue Pedestrian Bridge. The area seems to clog up for fairly obvious reasons (it’s narrow and the street is vertically separated from the curb at one point ). See if any barriers can be put in place to encourage movement.

I look forward to attending RiverSplash next year and hopefully seeing the construction progress at Gatehouse Capitol and Ruvin Development’s Hotel Palomar.

The nation’s third largest independent advertising firm Cramer-Krasselt, who as you may remember was supposed to move to a Robert Ruvin-development in the Park East neighborhood, has announced that they’re moving from Van Buren Street to the Third Ward.

The firm will move to a 50,000 square feet location at 224 E Chicago St above Rubin’s Furniture. They will barely gain any space, but will have what they think is a much more efficient layout (what exactly that means they haven’t too clear about, but let’s assume it’s not a cubicle farm).

While the move isn’t a sign of improving health for urban Milwaukee, because they’re simply trading one space for another, it does help cement the fact that the creative types are certainly calling the Third Ward home.

The bigger question raised is what type of businesses will call the Park East neighborhood home?  Cramer-Krasselt moving into the undeveloped neighborhood certainly would have been a large boost for creative firms, but may not have been as good for the city.

The concentration of similar firms seems to be a key ingredient of economic success (see Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or even all the biotech firms in Madison). While for the most part that is seen on a macro level (Silicon Valley is a huge swath of land and includes a few different cities), similar firms locating close to each other in Milwaukee is a strong recruiting tool for each firm and for new startups.

It’s going to be a whole lot easier to convince someone from Boston to come to Milwaukee if they know they’re going to be working (and hopefully living) in an area that is filled with like-minded individuals. If they can visit the city and see all the companies in one neighborhood versus being sprinkled all over there will be a lot better first impression made.

While the Third Ward continues to draw in creative firms, who will occupy the stretch from the old Pabst brewery eastward.