Milwaukee is in the process of losing a historic landmark, the remaining tannery buildings of the former A.F. Gallun & Sons Company tannery are being demolished on the city’s Lower East Side. The buildings once housed one of the city’s many tanning businesses, but in a few weeks all that will remain is the redeveloped office building on the south side of North Water Street.

At yesterday’s meeting of the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee Jackson Street Management LLC won an appeal of the Historic Preservation Commission’s ruling regarding their request to demolish five buildings within the East Side Commercial Historic District to make way for a new Marriott Hotel.

Gold’s Gym will soon open at 731 N. Water Street, a building that has been empty for 22 years. The gym will occupy five out of eight floors in the building, which was originally built as an annex to the Daniel Burnham designed First Wisconsin National Bank building next door at 735 N. Water Street. As part of the opening of Gold’s Gym, both of the First Wisconsin National Bank buildings will be rebranded as The City Center at 735.

Last night the Historic Preservation Commission voted to allow Wave Development, LLC to demolish the historic structures located along Milwaukee St. and Wisconsin Ave. to build a new Marriott Hotel. Under the condition that the project would save and restore the buildings’ facades as part of the new development.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Marriott Hotel proposed for downtown Milwaukee has received a lot of attention lately. It parlays questions going far beyond the buildings themselves.

Wave Development, LLC is seeking a Certificate of Appropriateness to demolish the buildings located at 319-327 East Wisconsin Ave., and 625-631 North Milwaukee St. to construct a Marriott Hotel. This request will be taken up at the November 15th, 2010 meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission.

Recently, it was reported that Robert and Michael Levine are once again considering the demolition of historic buildings along Wisconsin Ave. and Broadway, with the hope of landing a hotel development. This proposal draws on the failed “urban renewal” projects of the past. Bulldoze the heart of the city, level the past, and then try, one day, to build new.

Enhancing Milwaukee’s identity is an elusive endeavor. A city can both make and be given an identity. Some recent town center developments have tried to create identity with one massive all encompassing project.

So says Jill Capicchioni, of the Historic Brewers Hill Association, in an email to the neighborhood mailing list. The “process” that Jill is intent on putting a wrench in is the proposed move of the State Department of Health Services from the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center, 1220 W. Vliet St., to a remodeled space at 2151 N. King Drive.

At the Thursday July 23rd meeting of the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee the appeal of he interim historic designation of the Hide House complex in Bay View was heard. The Hide House complex is made up of a series of buildings constructed over decades with the earliest buildings dating to 1898. At earlier meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission Alderman Zielinski’s nomination of the complex for interim historic designation was approved