Sydney Hih

The historic Sydney Hih building, which city officials had intended to tear down, may have been saved for another day, due to a legalistic maneuver by alderman and attorney Bob Baumann at a Tuesday meeting of the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee.

As part of a joint city-county effort to bring Kohl’s corporate headquarters to downtown Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Economic Development Corp., an affiliate of the City of Milwaukee, had quietly purchased the Sidney Hih, in order to ensure site control for the project. But Kohl’s decided not to move Downtown, and no other viable project has arisen for the site, yet the City recently issued an order to raze the Sydney Hih, seemingly sealing its fate.

So things stood when the Zoning committee took up the issue of an “obsolete” file (091436) that normally would have been summarily dismissed. The file was a citizen’s request to save the Sidney Hih, filed back in February, 2009, and approved by the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

Jim Owczarski, City of Milwaukee Clerk, explained that the historic preservation ordinance required the council to act within two years of an application for preservation, and that the two years had already passed, making the file obsolete, and eliminating that impediment to razing the Sidney Hih. But Alderman Bauman objected, noting that the Zoning committee had acted to hold the file back in the Spring of 2010, which effectively “tolled” the process and stopped the clock from continuing to run on the historic preservation proposal.

Given the differing viewpoints on the status of the file being offered by the City Clerk and Bauman, Ald. Michael Murphy made a motion to hold the file, keeping the issue open. The committee approved the motion.

Frankly, by the time the Committee concluded its business the status of the file, and the Sydney Hih wasn’t entirely clear.

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele

Will Chris Abele run for mayor? Sources have told me the Milwaukee County Executive is considering running for mayor of Milwaukee should Tom Barrett get elected governor — and has even talked about trying to hold both positions at once. I reached Abele, who conceded discussing this with friends: “I tend to think out loud.” Abele said he spends a lot of time thinking about efficiencies and how to consolidate government functions, and that any merger of city and county functions is inevitably stymied by turf battles. Whereas if he held both executive positions, he jokes, “I’m unlikely to get into turf battles with myself.”

That’s funny, but perhaps not the best campaign slogan. I think the idea of Abele holding both positions would get quickly hooted down as an unseemly power grab, with radio squawkers Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling leading the chorus of critics. Abele, however, adds that “it’s nothing I’m actively pursuing.”

Nor could he. As Sykes has noted, correcting an early version of my column, if Barrett is elected governor, Common Council President Willie Hines would take over as acting mayor.

Double Dipping

Last week I wrote about State Sen. Van Wanggaard’s double dipping. It’s worth noting two other double dippers, in this case Democrats: New City Treasurer Spencer Coggs intends to continue collecting his state senator salary of about $50,000 through 2012 even as he earns $114,000 from the city. And new county supervisor Dave Cullen intends to continue collecting his state assembly salary through 2012. Both have suggested they might give the money back to charity, but as talk radio’s Jeff Wagner notes, these kind of promises are easily broken. Indeed, former county supervisors Joe Rice and Paul Cesarz both made pledges to give back much of their salaries, but the press soon forgot about it and neither ever disclosed how much they ever gave back.

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in New York

My, how times have changed. In the old days, a trip by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra would have generated a bunch of reviews from the New York press, bringing the MSO national attention. Nowadays, the concert doesn’t even get a review by the home town newspaper. That’s right, last Friday’s Carnegie Hall concert got no review from the New York Times or any other NYC publication, nor even from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The only reviews were by Milwaukee’s ThirdCoast Digest (thanks to Tom Strini), and the daily paper in Birmingham, Alabama. Imagine the next time the orchestra tries to sell donors to sponsor such a trip: hey, this could get us a review from an Alabama critic.

In the Eyes

The eyes have it: gubernatorial rivals Scott Walker and Tom Barrett are in many ways polar opposites, particularly when you look at their eyes. Walker’s typically look sleepy, even when he’s delivering a fiery speech. Barrett looks wild-eyed; there’s a strange intensity to the cast of his eyes. It’s ironic: firebrand revolutionary Walker looks like he’s about to snooze while the typically bland Barrett’s eyes signal a crazed ferocity.

They Love Ron Johnson and Paul Ryan

In a Sunday New York Times story on the Tea Party challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson was cited as a key ally: McConnell “enlisted” Johnson, “a freshman elected with Tea Party backing, to lead efforts to coordinate the Republican messages and agenda in the Senate and the House with the party’s presidential nominee.” That seeming elevation of Johnson’s stature is ironic, since Johnson subtly distanced himself from the Tea Party during his successful campaign against Russ Feingold.

The same story noted that “Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman, has become perhaps his party’s most important policy maker.” That’s good news for Ryan, but makes you wonder just how deep the GOP party’s bench goes when it comes to policy making.

Hooters and Flag Burning

The Journal Sentinel has been too high-minded to report the fact that Walker spokeswoman Ciara Mathews was once a Hooters girl, but the liberal Capital Times was happy to spread the story and link to a spicy image, earning the scorn of Fox Nation and Jeff Wagner.

Not to be outdone, conservatives have gone after state Democratic Party Communications Director Graeme Zielinski for burning a flag while in college. I’m sure members of both parties are relieved that no photos of a scantily dressed Zielinski were unearthed.

Where was Peter Bock?

Did anyone notice Peter Bock’s invisibility in the Democratic gubernatorial primary? Bock is a former state legislator who was highly regarded (a 1997 Milwaukee Magazine story by yours truly rated him as one of the ten best lawmakers)  and is married to Kathleen Falk,  but you never heard about him campaigning for her in the gubernatorial primary. Of course, Bock is also an old friend of Falk’s opponent Tom Barrett; Barrett and Bock often traveled to Madison together when both were legislators.

CEO Pay

Kudos to reporter Cary Spivak and the Journal Sentinel for their Sunday stories on corporate executive pay. As grossly high as company filings show CEO pay is today, Spivak has documented that the pay is even higher in some cases, as documented by the state net tax records. He found that in 2010, former Bucryrus International CEO Tim Sullivan and Rockwell Automation CEO Keith Nosbusch both earned a stratospheric $29.5 million while Harley Davidson CEO Keith Wandell brought home $20.4 million.

Spivak also took a look at shareholder votes on executive pay, showing that many companies are seeing a backlash from shareholders. And small wonder, when you have numerous CEOs getting huge raises while shareholders get the shaft: in 2011, Manitowoc Co. Inc. CEO Glen Tellock got a 77 percent raise while the value of the company’s stock declined 29 percent and MGIC Investment Corp. CEO Curt Culver saw his pay rise 28 percent while the company’s stock dropped 63 percent.

The newspaper typically includes the pay of its own CEO in these stories, but this story went further, spotlighting Journal Communications Inc. CEO Steven Smith, whose rose by 8.5 percent even as company earnings dropped by 35 percent and the stock price dropped 9 percent. That showed some guts by JS editor Marty Kaiser.

“If somebody other than me is elected on June 5th, it will have fundamentally changed elections in Wisconsin,” Walker predicted. “I think you’ll have a recall the year after. And a recall the year after. And a recall the year after. It will be recall ping-pong. It will go back and forth. I think that’s a horrendous outcome. Employers will be scared to death of that. You’d see a retraction of jobs as people move somewhere else.”

No, Walker didn’t predict a plague of locusts, but his message was clear: his defeat would forever darken the political landscape of Wisconsin.

Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has offered a medical analogy to define the utter terror of recalls:  “Recall elections are like a cancer,” he declared. The legislature must “apply chemotherapy immediately to try to stop the cancer from spreading.”

JS editorials have echoed Vos’ doctorly stance, diagnosing  “recall fever” and decrying the “poisonous atmosphere” it has caused. Another editorial echoed Walker’s prediction of recall ping-pong, suggesting there could be  “a wave of recalls following his.”

“Politicians, regardless of party, should not be recalled over one issue or one (or even several) votes,” the editorial maintained.

Funny. When the Milwaukee County pension scandal broke, it involved just one issue. Yet the Journal Sentinel ran an orgy of front page stories, hammering Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament and the Milwaukee County Board unrelentingly for months. A recall effort was launched against Ament (who resigned rather than get thrown out) and nine or ten supervisors (seven were successfully recalled). None of these politicians were accused of misconduct in office (which Vos and the Journal Sentinel believe should be the only possible reason to recall a politician from office). Yet the paper did everything it could to induce recall fever with its news coverage.  Apparently, it likes some recalls better than others.

The Journal Sentinel, and conservative bloggers like Christian Schneider, argue it has become too easy to recall public officials. On the contrary. “Historically, recall attempts at the state level have been unsuccessful,”the National Conference of State Legislatures has noted.

Its data shows that since 1913, when the first recall laws were passed, there have been just 33 recall attempts of state officials in the U.S. and 17 that were successful. That, by the way, includes last year’s wave of legislative recalls in Wisconsin. This election will add five more recall attempts for Wisconsin and the nation.

And it’s much tougher to do a recall in Wisconsin. Wisconsin requires anyone wanting to recall a governor to get enough signatures equal to 25 percent of those who voted in the last election. Idaho requires just 20 percent, Georgia and Oregon and Rhode Island 15 percent, California only 12 percent.

No state makes it easier than California, yet the recall of Gray Davis didn’t create a ping-pong effect. There has been no attempt to recall a governor since.

The bar in Wisconsin is so high that no one ever thought a governor could be recalled. I was among those who predicted the opponents of Walker could never get that many signatures. Wow, were we wrong.

Schneider has argued that back in the horse-and-buggy days, it was harder to organize a recall. If so, that would only be a reason to increase the number of signatures required. But is it really so easy to recall a governor today?  Then why wasn’t Gov. Jim Doyle recalled?

Schneider, after all, has argued that Wisconsin was actually more divided under Doyle, citing a poll showing 55 percent of voters disapproving of him compared to 47 percent who disapproved of Walker.

Yet opponents of Doyle tried to organize a recall and gave up; they couldn’t get anywhere near enough signatures to recall him. Schneider also says Wisconsin has “always housed deep divisions.” Yet no governor in history had ever been recalled until now. The JS editorial condemned another example of those dreaded single issue recalls: Opponents of state senators Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) and Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) threatened to recall them from office because they opposed legislation to make it easier for mining companies to operate in Wisconsin. But neither recall materialized. Recalls aren’t easy.

Have there been excesses in the recall process? I think Democrats have wasted our time targeting some state senators they have no hopes of recalling. And Republicans have perverted the process by running fake Democrats in order to force a primary election in each case.

But excesses come with any kind of democratic process. That’s not a reason to eliminate recalls.

The irony of all this conservative opposition to recalls is that most recalls in Wisconsin have been organized by conservatives and championed by talk radio. Indeed, it was the demise of Ament which led directly to Walker’s election to county executive, and gave him the platform to run for governor. Walker was once a big fan of recalls. Now he decries their impact on Wisconsin.

Misconduct in office is something that’s typically policed by the legislature or legal system, whereas recalls arose out of the old Progressive tradition, with the goal of making public officials more answerable to the electorate. If you believe in recalls to throw out Democrats like Ament, how can you oppose them for Republicans like Walker?

Car Culture

In this edition of Car Culture, just how green are electric cars? Plus, more on texting and driving, and the other side of “pleasure driving.”

Electric Charging Stations

The City of Milwaukee is beginning to install electric charging stations at multiple locations around town in an attempt to promote and support electric vehicles.  With the dual threats of climate change and peak oil bearing down on us, moving away from gasoline, and back, yes back, to electric vehicles is long overdue.  The use of electric cars may reduce our dependency on oil, and in the long run (over decades) could reduce or eliminate auto emissions, but electric car technology is at this point far from perfect.

Sure, the concept of a green and clean electric car sounds wonderful, but it doesn’t actually exist.  One day could these electric cars could run on 100% renewable energy, but unfortunately, in Milwaukee today they will be using electricity generated by the dirtiest coal fired electrical plant in Wisconsin.  We Energies has made noise about converting to cleaner, not clean, natural gas, which would help make our air cleaner and electric cars greener, but we are not there yet.

And even if these charging stations and our homes are one day putting out power that is 100% renewable an electric car still won’t be completely green, it won’t be any safer than any gas guzzling Impala, and doesn’t solve the land-use issues created by a car-oriented America.  The green credentials of an electric car come up a bit short as approximately 50% of the pollution generated by a car comes during  its manufacturing and disposal.  Safer?  No, people will simply get behind the wheel of an electric, instead of fossil fueled, car and proceed to crash into things and or people when drunk.  And finally, land will continue to be gobbled up for parking, expansive roadways will continue to divide neighborhoods and cover over farmland, and these cars will only further our auto-dependent lifestyle by encouraging us to sprawl further and further apart.

Texting and Driving Part Deux

In the first edition of Car Culture I mentioned that Wisconsin teenagers were gathering to learn about the dangers of texting and driving. I believe the video below should have been required viewing at that meeting.  The video comes from Belgium where a few new drivers got punked, and learned an invaluable lesson when they were informed they had to pass the “mobile phone test.” They all failed miserably when put to the “test,” showing just how dangerous it can be to text and drive.  One of the punked drivers wraps up the message saying, “It’s too dangerous.” I agree.

http://youtu.be/HbjSWDwJILs

Weekend Fun

A recent blog post on the First Weber website suggests taking a drive for some fun this weekend.  On the surface it seems innocuous, but it is yet another example of how the automobile, which primarily is a tool to get from A to B, has become something more.  I’ll admit it, when I was 16 “going for a drive” was a fun way to spend a weekend eventing.  I understand now that while driving around aimlessly can be fun, but it can also be wasteful, costly, and pointless.  Yes, we do have a car culture, as you can see from the following accidents of the week:

Dangerous Roads

• Three cars collide near 60th and Brown Deer
• Seven injured after school bus collides with car in Germantown
• Weather may be to blame for two-car crash on I-43
• Car smashes into tree, catches fire
• One dead in rollover crash near Wausau
• Woman run over and killed in West Allis may have been hit first by another car

Loosen Your Belt to Cure Obesity

You can’t reduce congestion by building more roads. But we’re still doing it.

• I-794 extension endorsed by Milwaukee County committee
• West Allis not happy with state’s plan to widen Highway 100
• Ground to be broken Friday for new Drexel Ave. interchange

Tweet of the Week

A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense. Stay alive, don’t drink and drive. twitter.com/TempePolice/st…

— Tempe Police (@TempePolice) May 6, 2012

Traffic engineers used to remove street trees, because they were dangerous to automobile drivers.  I’m glad to see the Tempe Police understand trees aren’t the issue.

The North End Phase II Construction

The North End Phase II Construction

The North End Phase II Construction

The North End Phase II Utility Work

State Senator Van Wanggaard

Is there any member of the Wisconsin legislature whose stand on public unions is more vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy than state Sen. Van Wanggaard of Racine? As a member of the Republican majority, Wanggaard has backed all the measures to cut back union rights and compensation. But prior to becoming a legislator, Wanggaard served nearly three decades as a police officer and several years as a union board member, who helped negotiate higher benefits for employees like himself.

Wangaard downplays his union roots: his 2010 campaign bio was quite long and detailed, but omitted any mention of his union jobs. He was a Racine police officer from 1972-2001, earning lifetime health insurance and a fine pension. After serving 29 years, he would have earned around 62 percent of his final average salary, which for a Traffic Investigator (his last position with the department), would have been in the neighborhood of $54,000, an insider with the Racine Police Department estimated. That would put Wanggaard’s annual pension at around $33,000. In an interview, Wanggaard conceded this was an accurate estimate.

Wanggaard is now double dipping from the government, earning $49,943 as a legislator plus $88 “per diem” for each day the legislature is in session. (The average legislator earns an additional $7,700 per year from this.) He could also earn an additional pension, but this would require him to freeze his retiree pay and Wanggaard says he preferred to continue collecting on his pension, so he is forgoing all state benefits that accrue to legislators.

All told, Wanggaard has done well as a government worker. Yet he supported Act 10, which cut back such benefits for the many public workers in Wisconsin. Wanggaard says he actually worked closely with Gov. Scott Walker to modify the bill and make its language less draconian. “I looked at the original bill and said ‘oh my goodness,’” he says. Whatever changes Wanggaard championed, the final legislation has put many public worker unions out of business.

“A lot of people saw that as a betrayal of his union roots,” says Randolph Brandt, a retired Racine Journal Times editor who helped lead the Committee to Recall Wanggaard. Brandt wrote an impassioned op ed for his old newspaper accusing Wanggaard of “laughing at…the citizens of Racine” and imploring voters to recall Wanggaard and punish him for “his hypocrisy.” Yep, you can be a lot more hyberbolic once you’ve retired from the newspaper biz.

Wanggaard has called the measures to trim worker benefits and collective bargaining “reforms that are working and saving taxpayers money.”  As to Brandt’s claim that his stance today is hypocritical, Wanggaard says its a different time, and the era of double digit increases in health insurances requires governments to rein in costs. Still, that’s a curious stance from someone who has lifetime, government-paid health insurance.

Wangaard’s old police union is endorsing his opponent John Lehman. According to Todd Hoover, president of the Racine Police Association,  their decision came because Wanggard favored measures that have restricted collective bargaining for police, and because Wanggaard’s support for reduced revenue sharing to cities will result in layoffs of police officers. When Wanggard was a police officer, Hoover says, “we had some pretty decent benefits. Now they’re disintegrating.”

Wanggaard is one of four state senators facing a recall this June, and his district is the one where Democrats have the best chance of scoring a victory. Lehman, who had held the district for one term (2006-2010), lost a close race to Wanggaard, who took office in 2011.  This has been a swing district that is fairly evenly divided: in 2010 Walker carried it with 54 percent of the vote, but in 2008 John McCain won just 44 percent of the vote against Barack Obama. A Democratic poll by Public Policy Polling, taken in mid April, showed a statistical dead heat, with Wanggaard at 48 percent and Lehman at 46 percent. (The margin of error was nearly 4 percent.)

One reason Lehman is running stronger than other recall challengers is because he has by far the strongest support among Democrats. The PPP poll showed he had the support of 86 percent of Democrats in the district, suggesting a very polarized race.

There’s been little coverage of the campaign, mostly some reporting by Fox 6 in Milwaukee, which hasn’t touched on Wanggaard’s background as a union rep. But that issue has certainly been bubbling up in Racine.

Lehman has accused Walker and the Republicans of “rewarding the rich” while “union-busting.” He calls Wanggaard’s policies “extreme.” Wanggaard told Fox TV that “John wants to expand everything and he wants to go back to the failed policies that he was a partial architect of with the Doyle budget before.”

Wanggaard has so far raised more campaign donations — about $151,000, compared to nearly $104,000 for Lehman (of which $11,300 came from unions). If money is the measure of who will win the June elections, it could be a big day for Republicans.

Bruce Murphy

Urban Milwaukee is happy to announce that Bruce Murphy has come aboard as our new editor and columnist, where he will revive his well-known column Murphy’s Law. Among the state’s best-known journalists, Murphy is most celebrated for his stories exposing the Milwaukee County pension scandal, which led to the resignation of County Executive F. Thomas Ament and the recall of seven county supervisors. No scandal in Milwaukee history resulted in more politicians being thrown out of office.

Murphy served seven years as editor of Milwaukee Magazine and three years as a senior enterprise reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he did numerous front page stories, including exposes of a generous state pension plan hatched by Gov. Tommy Thompson (which earned him a lifetime increase in his pension of more than $100,000) and a hard-hitting series on corporate executive pay.

Murphy was an online innovator, as co-founder and editor/writer of the website MilwaukeeWorld.com, and has TV credentials as well, having worked as a reporter for the WMVS-TV show “Interchange.”  He also forged a path in alternative weeklies, as editor of the upstart Metro Milwaukee Weekly in the late 1990s, until the paper was purchased by the Shepherd Express, where Murphy served as editor in 1999. He also had a two-year stint with the Madison alt weekly Isthmus in the mid-1980s, where he was an arts and entertainment editor and occasional political columnist.

Murphy has won more than 30 national and state writing awards, including the national Champion Tuck award (1984) for outstanding reporting on economic issues (fellow winners that year were Walter Cronkite, National Public Radio and the New York Times). He’s received nine White Awards from the City and Regional Magazine Association, including back-to-back honors for investigative writing in 1995-1996, and more than a dozen from the state-wide competition of the Milwaukee Press CIub.

Murphy’s signature Murphy’s Law column was created by and featured for nearly two years at MilwaukeeWorld.com, and then continued during his time at Milwaukee Magazine. It ranges widely in subject matter, but has been a must-read for news and and politics junkies. Look for this first column at Urban Milwaukee tomorrow.

“We feel like we’ve created a real connection with our readers at Urban Milwaukee, and we think they’ll be excited to see Murphy’s addition to our team,” says Urban Milwaukee publisher Dave Reid, who co-founded this website with president Jeramey Jannene. “We’re thrilled to bring a journalist of such stature to our publication,” says Jannene, “and looking forward to working with Bruce. You can expect many more changes in the months to come.”

Eyes on Milwaukee

This week’s Eyes on Milwaukee column explores Herb Kohl’s commitment to a new arena, the idea of another downtown strip club, Northwestern Mutual’s potential new downtown building, and a whole lot more.

Herb Kohl’s Arena Commitment

At his annual end of the season press conference, team owner Herb Kohl announced his commitment to helping finance a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks. Kohl got a lot of attention for committing to help finance a new arena, but avoided getting into details. It’s important to note that even though new stadiums are often built with substantial public investment, the teams themselves often contribute to the facility. This is no more clear than in Minnesota, where the Minnesota Vikings’ team share is one of the hot button issues for their new facility.

While Kohl said his commitment would be “not insignificant,” it’s unreasonable to hold our breath assuming he’ll pay for the majority of a new facility himself. Milwaukee got lucky once with Jane and Lloyd Pettit paying for the entire Bradley Center (with the hope of landing an NHL team – which is part of the reason the facility has so quickly become outdated), but it’s pretty clear that won’t happen again.

For a point of reference on current arena costs, the newest arena in the NBA, the Amway Center in Orlando, cost $480 million. I would guess a new facility in Milwaukee would cost less than that, but it’s not going to come in under $100 million like the Bradley Center did.

All in all, the most significant thing Herb Kohl did is start the public push for a new arena. We should expect whomever owns the Bucks to contribute to the costs of a new arena. That said, Kohl’s move of publicly announcing his commitment was certainly a shrewd public relations move.

We will certainly discuss this topic at length in the future. We’ve even in the past discussed tearing down the Bradley Center for a new facility.

A Second Downtown Milwaukee Strip Club

Silk owner Jon Ferraro is back with another license application for a strip club on Old World Third Street. He is applying at the same location he previously applied at, 730 N. Old World Third St., Of note, Jon Ferraro’s lawsuit against the city regarding his previous application for a strip club in this space (in 2010) is still pending. I assume the two are related, and I’m pretty sure we will find out soon how.

It’s important to note that if granted, Silk East would be the second strip club downtown. Art’s Performing Center is located at 144 E. Juneau Ave. Although only garnering 1 and a half stars on Yelp, Art’s clearly hasn’t damaged the image of downtown, and there isn’t any reason to believe Silk East would either. Aspiring to be like downtown Minneapolis and its numerous strip clubs on the other hand, that’s a bad idea.

Northwestern Mutual’s Possible New Downtown Building Staying Quiet

The Quiet Company has succeeded in keeping their development of a new facility to house hundreds of employees quiet. As a reminder, Northwestern Mutual announced in September of 2011 that they would demolish the 16-story brown office building located on the southeast corner of Mason and Cass streets because of looming long-term maintenance costs. In December it was announced they would buy the building located at 733 N. Van Buren Street from Joel Lee’s Van Buren Building Co, with the intent to close on the purchase in 2012 and move employees in 2013. The newly acquired building, formerly home of Cramer-Krasselt, was assessed at $4,502,000 in 2011.

Will the company stay and keep this batch of employees downtown? That remains to be seen, as the firm indicated they’re looking at their options for a new building downtown (where it currently has employees 3,000) or relocating the employees to the Franklin campus (2,000 existing employees). With the failure of Mayor Barrett to fit a square peg into a round hole by getting Kohl’s to move to the Park East, expect the city to throw everything they can at Northwestern Mutual to make sure their new building is downtown.

If the City fails to land the new building it will be quite ironic to see the Downtown Transit Center redeveloped while Northwestern Mutual replaces their 500,000 square foot building with a parking lot or empty park.

Facade Repair

Jeff Sherman notes the new “facade” given to the covered buildings on the 600 block of N. Broadway, just south of Wisconsin Ave. The buildings were formerly covered by an ugly wood facade, but it’s now painted to resemble resemble a building. While the new “facade” is a significant improvement, it’s a shame it took years to come together, and a real tenant would certainly be far more desired.

Sherman noted the new Marriott Hotel under construction a block away, but even more appreciative of the improvement to this empty building are likely the owners of the Hilton Garden Inn. The hotel, which is under construction on the same block, will occupy the rehabbed Loyalty Building. The website for the Hilton Garden Inn is now online.

As far as facade upgrades in the area go, the pair of buildings around the corner on Wisconsin Ave take the cake for an improvement (all part of the same parcel as the hidden the Broadway buildings). Ultimately though, all are a hollow effort until actual tenants move in.

For what it’s worth I’m also eager to see renovations get underway to improve the Iron Block Building at the corner of Water and Wisconsin. The Iron Block Building is one of the historic buildings that help give downtown Milwaukee its charming character.

Development News

The Milwaukee County Transportation, Public Works, and Transit Committee unanimously authorized the Director of the Department of Transportation to declare surplus and offer for sale the Downtown Transit Center today. This move keeps the redevelopment of the Downtown Transit Center on track. The authorization will now go before the full Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. Of note, the proceeds from the sale of the land will need to go for capital projects for transit in Milwaukee County, not for operating funds.

Openings and Closings

Cafe Centraal is expanding east. The Lowlands Group restaurant will occupy the space immediately to its east on E. Lincoln Ave that formerly housed an acupuncture and massage therapy business.

City.Net Cafe is coming soon to E. Wisconsin Avenue just east of Broadway. The original City.Net Cafe is open at 7211 W. Burgleigh Street. The website for the existing cafe is CityNetJazz.com, not City.Net. The cafe is owned by Sam Belton.

The Dogg House on Jefferson Street will be short-lived, at least for now. At the first regular meeting of the Licenses Committee during the current Milwaukee Common Council session, owner Mazen Muna was informed that he has likely been operating illegally (despite his understanding that the Health Dept had cleared his operation). Muna currently operates four other locations within the City of Milwaukee. This only goes to show how the City’s licensing process is at times quite confusing and ripe for overhaul. As of lunch today, the restaurant is still open presumably using some form of double jeopardy defense.

Greek Village Gyros intends to open at 1888 N. Humboldt Ave. the location was formerly home to Meglio Pizzeria. The registered agent on the liquor license application is George Dimitropoulos.

O’Lydia’s Bar and Grill, 338 S. 1st Street (formerly Slim McGinn’s), is opening an art gallery on its second floor. OnMilwaukee has more.

Rumor Lounge, an upscale lounge, has had their liquor license approved at Monday’s Licenses Committee meeting. The lounge will open at the corner of Pittsburgh Avenue and 1st Street in Vetter Denk’s headquarters (161 South 1st Street).

The Twisted Fisherman Crab Shack also had their liquor license approved at Monday’s Licenses Committee meeting. The Crab Shack is the latest venture from Russ Davis and will open in a converted warehouse in the Menomonee Valley. Davis also has operated Rio West Cantina, Lakefront Brewery Palm Garden, Riverwalk Boat Tours and the Hubbard Park Lodge. He formerly operated Cafe Vecchio and later The Red Accordian in the space currently occupied by The Loaded Slate.

Car Culture

In this, the second installment of Car Culture, we’ll enjoy a little bit of Disney magic, learn about a long overdue car service which is finally coming to Milwaukee, and lament the loss of an opportunity to make Milwaukee a better place while attracting tourists from across the region.

Disney’s Magic Highways

For years we have been taught that our society is, and will be, oriented around the automobile.  US automakers did it by marketing the automobile as freedom, and the video below shows just how the fine folks at Disney got into the act.  The video presents an idealized version of a car-oriented vision of America.  The video positively proclaims “the shape of our cities will change, as expanded highway transportation decentralizes our population centers into vast urban areas.”  Unfortunately, this has all been too true.  What this video didn’t foresee was the ugliness that this vision created, neighborhoods literally destroyed, homes designed around the car (often with the most prominent feature being the garage), America’s strip mall wasteland, and oceans of asphalt covering up our countryside.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6pUMlPBMQA[/youtube]

Designated Driver Service

Lets face it Milwaukeans enjoy a good beverage, and unfortunately far too often bring their car with them to the bar.  Although I’d normally suggest leaving the car at home and taking a cab when heading out on the town, there will soon be a safe option if you insist on bringing your car to the bar.  Zingo Milwaukee.  Zingo’s motto “Your car, our driver” says it all.  Yes, they will drive your car home for you.  So plan ahead, go out, have a good time, and enjoy the ride home in your own car, just not from behind the wheel.

Opportunity Lost

Stephanie Beecher, of ThirdCoast Digest, writes “Milwaukee’s famous arches are set to undergo a major overhaul next year, and commuters can breathe a sigh of relief: the Hoan Bridge will not be shut down during construction.”  I know this was a big concern for many suburban commuters, though had the bridge been closed during construction it would likely have saved time and money.  If the Hoan Bridge was closed during construction, it is likely these drivers would have spent just about the same amount of time driving on city streets or alternate routes, just as they did when the Hoan was closed in the past.

Beyond the perceived inconvenience, the true problem with this project is the lost opportunity.  After hundreds of millions are spent to fix this bridge, what we will have is basically the same bridge.  The auto-only focus of WisDOT has led to a project that is not an improvement, and has no new benefits.  B y incorporating a bike and pedestrian trail on the bridge, Wisconsin had a chance to create a destination, add utility, improve mobility, and quite simply add value to Milwaukee. Unfortunately we’ve missed that opportunity.

Dangerous Roads

• Three-car crash leaves one dead, four injured near city’s west side
• Deputies arrest wrong-way driver after crash on Hoan Bridge
• Public Works evaluating 51st and Meinecke after child killed
• Driver in crash that killed 2 was intoxicated
• West Allis mother, son killed in separate crashes Sunday morning
• Portage County crash kills three
• Milwaukee officer suspended after drunken-driving crash
• One dead in western Wisconsin crash
• 35-year-old woman injured after minivan hits truck on Hwy. 151

Loosen Your Belt to Cure Obesity

• I-94 update with Ryan Luck
• Milwaukee County: Requesting an extension of the Lake Parkway and added to regional transportation plan by SEWRPC and preliminary engineering by WisDOT
• US 41 to become interstate by 2014

Tweet of the Week

I thought autocorrect was swerving your car back into your lane after drifting over while tweeting.

I thought autocorrect was swerving your car back into your lane after drifting over while tweeting.

I thought autocorrect was swerving your car back into your lane after drifting over while tweeting.

— Major Unzipped Fly (@ImaFlyontheWall) May 4, 2012

I’m sure this is trying to be funny, but I find it scary.

]]> http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2012/05/04/car-culture-disney%e2%80%99s-magic-highways-designated-driver-service-opportunity-lost-and-more/feed/ 10 http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2012/05/04/ff-188/ http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2012/05/04/ff-188/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 17:05:03 +0000 Friday Photos /2012/05/04/ff-/ The North End Phase II Construction

The North End Phase II Construction

The North End Phase II Construction

The Moderne

1910 on Water Construction

 

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