Bus barn is coming down for 44-floor, lakefront high rise, The Couture.
Bus barn is coming down for 44-floor, lakefront high rise, The Couture. Back to the full article.
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…and downtown Milwaukee moves forward once again!
I can’t wait for this building. It will be an impressive addition to the skyline and the property tax that comes with it will be a boon as well!
Janene plays fast and lose with the facts surrounding the “sale” for $500,000. This transfer was accomplished through quite a bit of negotiation which included clearing the issue of Public Trust property in which Milw Co. Sued POP, not the other way around. In this case the trial judge did find that part of the property was public trust land but approved the transfer because of the continued public use as a transit center for a bus/street car turn around AND a public park in this building at the upper level of the transit hub. The public needs to insist on this public use and make the developer understand that public access was part of this deal and part of our public trust rights.
Thank you Patricia Jursik! Well said.
As Jeramey Jannene noted in his article, the Downtown Transit Center was a mistake and the “facility’s design and location were certainly contributing factors to its lack of use.” It would be nice if Milwaukee County learned from its past mistakes and did not repeat them as it is about to do with its Bus Rapid Transit proposal. This new system will costs millions of dollars which MCTS, local property owners, and the federal government do not have. In addition as everyone knows who currently rides the Gold Line, it is not needed and the proposed increased ridership and economic benefits are simply “pie in the sky” estimates that have no basis in reality. I feel confident in predicting that ten years after millions are spent on developing the BRT line that it will be eliminated like the Downtown Transit Center. There will be no increased ridership, and it will have produced more negatives than positives (the value of homes and businesses along the line will have decreased, traffic congestion will have increased, and the MCTS will be bankrupt).
@Patricia – Thank you for the comment and your years in the trenches on this issue. I corrected the parties on the lawsuit.
Appreciate the authors correction. I wish this project well but hope that these developers know that there is quite a large public contribution and respect the right of ingress and egress in the public part of this project.
The really big “Mistake on the Lake” was the demolition of the lakefront landmark train depot on this site. “Milwaukee Record” vividly records its history in text and images.
“There was talk of saving the lake front depot, or at least preserving its distinctive clock tower but those efforts ultimately came to nothing, largely because local officials were then focused on building a lakefront freeway and had little interest in preserving a building that no longer had an apparent use.
Charlie House, writing in the Feb.2, 1968 edition of The Milwaukee Journal, described the station in its final days as it awaited demolition.
‘The 78-year-old building, once a symbol of affluence and progress in Milwaukee, has ceased to serve its historic purpose as the city’s gateway. The striking clock tower thrusts itself for 234 feet into Milwaukee’s skyline. But it languishes in shabby elegance, used up, debased, slighted, unwanted.
With a life expectancy which has faded to mere days, it stands as a vandalized, pigeon stained, disconsolate monument to the history of a city which does not care.'”
Attorney Charlie Kamps and his wife Mary led the campaign and legal challenge that ultimately stopped the proposed lakefront freeway from scarring Milwaukee’s skyline and exceptional lakefront experience. They later co-founded Preserve Our Parks and still serve on its board.
Well anyway, that was one butt-ugly building. Moving on up!
Update: The above report on the lakefront depot was in “Milwaukee Notebook.”
https://milwaukeenotebook.com/2014/06/13/photo-friday-the-depot-at-the-lake/
It didn’t have to be a mistake. The mistake was in not supporting the use of regional transit with more “robust” measures- such as road taxes, wheel taxes, downtown parking increases, employee bus passes, the now coming BRT’s, and…. Weaning ourselves from the automobile has always been a good idea.
The mistake was the grotesque misuse of what ought to be some of the most valuable residential/commercial land in the entire state for a bus garage.
Only politicians could be that stunningly stupid. Good riddance.
I am fully amused by Patricia Jursik being very skeptical and worried over Barret Lo and public availability when it went out of its way to work in the couture and add extra public space in along with working with the lakefront gateway project and have the pedestrian bridge go through its building. They’ve shown time and time again they plan to fully allow the public to use the public portions of this building. Maybe instead the county board should be worried about fixing the bus funding issue, actually fully funding our parks and not just grandstanding against Abele on the issue, actually helping take down the Estabrook damn, and a million other important things.