Talk about car-centric. And what a huge parking lot. Yes, it can be improved.
Talk about car-centric. And what a huge parking lot. Yes, it can be improved. Back to the full article.
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Great article. One other thing improving this intersection might do is provide a better link between Mitchell Park and the neighborhood. National represents such a dramatic break in pedestrian friendliness I would actually be curious to see how many community members feel comfortable walking to the park as opposed to driving, even though it is really only a few blocks away.
I ride my bike almost everyday on National from 23th to the VA, then cut down to Beloit heading west. The 27th street intersection doesn’t seem especially dangerous to bike/ped traffic, but it sure is ugly. The same could be said about nearly every major intersection in town. If aesthetics are the main concern, it probably will never be improved since most people really just don’t care
What is really at a lack here is change; the intersection is virtually the same as 40 years ago, if not longer. Outside of Walgreens switching corners and BMO being the current financial institution at the corner, it remains the same. Same huge parking lot. Same amount of residents that drive or walk to the store. Same, same, same. Even the missing link to Mitchell Park, it has always been this way. Unfortunately there are a lot of neighborhoods like this.
Ah, Milwaukee, City of Lost Opportunities — this intersection for instance. I never understood exactly what Walgreen’s was thinking when they made their diagonal move. The need for a drive-thru? Additional parking? Those could have been met at the old location, in fact it would have been great if the strip-mall owners, who had everything to lose with the move, offered to remodel for Walgreen’s needs and what better time to remodel the mall? The only reason I can think of (maybe a compelling one from a corporate viewpoint) was to take that store out of competition from the Walgreens on both 16th & Wisconsin and 35th & Wisconsin.
See, the strip mall opened not too long after the city’s first shopping center, Southgate, opened in 1951, and was intended to sap southbound traffic to the new attraction from across the 27th St. Viaduct. With the subsequent changes in retail that Walgreens location ended up sapping traffic from right between the 16th & 35th St stores to the north. But that would be a lousy, soul-less corporate reason to rip down one of the neighborhood’s most enduring institutions, the old National Liquor Bar. That had character. That was the real crossroads of almost every class.
As for that strip mall, its other anchor was a Tate’s Shop-Rite supermarket (now replaced by a thriving Goodwill store) that lasted until a Pick N Save opened at 19th & National. Some of us who shopped there referred to the Mall as “The Village of the Damned”, both because of the hellish parking lot (no rules) and the fact that almost every time one shopped at Tate’s either the police or Tate’s security guards were busy nabbing a shoplifter.
Just as that mall tried to sap Southgate’s traffic, and Southgate decimated Mitchell St., so Southgate was decimated 20 years later by Southridge and on it goes. In the case of Walgreens, for years they made it a habit to locate right in view of local pharmacists, only to have CVS duplicate Walgreens predatory move by locating directly across from Walgreens whenever possible. In this vicious underbelly of retail resides an opportunity. Imagine a new retail/residential development where the worn-out mall is, with stores fronting Layton Blvd., apartments staggered above for two or three stories, using set-backs to create decks, parking behind (being careful to carve out for the residential hold- outs on 28th St. behind the current mall), accessed off National, 28th St & W. Pierce St and, yes, maybe a CVS anchoring the southeast corner. Just a thought.
Great article, but missing some context and history. Sent you email to your blog site? Hope that we can talk more! best, JZ