New Development in Menomonee Valley?
A new road and design solutions could attract development and 800 new jobs.
Kneeland Properties Rendering with new street grid. Rendering by HGA.
The City announced plans this week to build a new road in the Menomonee Valley in order to bring some 40 acres of property onto the market, 10 of which the city owns.
The land is a group of parcels sitting under the I-94 bridge on the north side of the Menomonee River. And this effort would be a speculative move by the city. The plan would mean putting in the infrastructure upfront to entice private development in the form of retail and manufacturing.
Sean Ryan of the Milwaukee Business Journal quotes Rocky Marcoux, the director of city development, as saying that without the road and connections developers would be loathe to come in. But with them the impact could be big. Corey Zetts, the executive director of the Menomonee Valley Partners, is quoted saying the development of the land could yield up to 800 jobs.
Menomonee Valley Partners, the city, and UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning’s Community Design Solutions also released details of design concepts for redevelopment of the the 40 acres in the valley, which Urban Milwaukee published. The many photos and renderings give a good idea of how the valley might change.
Designs:
Unusual New Apartment Building in Third Ward
The Third Ward is getting a new apartment building, and it’s going to act as a shell for a We Energies substation.
That’s right. The development being proposed by Robert Joseph, a developer that has worked on projects in the neighborhood and throughout the East Side, is a seven-story structure with 60 apartment units, retail on the first floor, and a We Energies substation concealed in the very heart of it.
Apparently, We Energies approached Joseph saying the East Side and nearby area had an increasing need for another substation in the area, as Michael Horne reported for Urban Milwaukee.
The building is planned for the southwest corner of N. Jefferson St. and E. St. Paul Ave. on two parcels that Joseph purchased in July 2017 for more than $800,000, as Jeramey Jannene reported. The building is being designed by Rinka Chung Architecture.
Naming Rights Rumors
Well, Foxconn may be sucking up Lake Michigan water and bulldozing Wisconsin wetlands in the near future, but it won’t be lending its name to the Milwaukee Bucks new arena.
In other non-naming news, Jeramey Jannene reported that Fiserv, a Brookfield-based financial services company will not be naming the new arena either, despite the chatter on online message boards and other signs this might happen.
We’ll all find out soon, it seems, which company will have their name attached to the arena, as Wes Edens, a Bucks co-owner, said contracts are being exchanged with this still mysterious entity.
But for now, as Jannene reports, we know that it’s a local company, that the naming rights likely fetched a hefty price tag, and that it won’t be these companies: Harley-Davidson, Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, Kohl’s, Northwestern Mutual or American Family Insurance.
Or Urban Milwaukee, in case you were wondering.
In Other News:
- The Lowes Building at 5300 W. Hope Ave., which has been vacant for the better part of a decade, might be soon be put to use, as Corri Hess of BizTimes reported.
- Milwaukee Film, the non-profit that runs the annual local film festival, has started to overhaul the Oriental Theatre.
- And Jannene has an updated and nice shots of the incredible progress of The Brewery at the old Pabst Brewing Complex.
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Plats and Parcels
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New Third Ward Tower Will Be Milwaukee’s Priciest
Mar 3rd, 2024 by Jeramey Jannene
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New Corporate Headquarters, 130 Jobs For Downtown
Feb 25th, 2024 by Jeramey Jannene
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A Four-Way Preservation Fight Over Wisconsin Avenue
Feb 18th, 2024 by Jeramey Jannene
It would be nice if the City of Milwaukee would include more things like Skateboard and Dog Parks as seen in these plans.. Several very good locations could be under the elevated portions of the freeways, which would already be covered from the weather. Milwaukee leaders need to go to other cities and see that you don’t need 6 blocks of parkland to create a dog park.
In NYC for example, they are constructed using a combination of grass, crushed stone and pea gravel, with raised planters and cordoned off plantings to protect the greenery. Many are only a few widths of an empty city lot in older neighborhoods. With all of the housing development in the Downtown and 3rd Ward neighborhoods, wouldn’t it be nice to have a place to take the dog?
Dog parks aren’t just for people with dogs. They’re also for people who don’t have a dog but like watching them play.
A few years ago, we had an apartment in Manhattan and used to visit dog parks just to stand there (beyond the fence) and watch the dogs hang out with each other.
Why are we trying to make the most marginal piece of property in the city nice?? The area is blanketed in 150 years of transportation assets, there’s no neighborhood, it has a disjointed street grid, and much of it is brownfield. Let’s just leave it as is. If folks want to make private investments down in that ditch, good for them, but it shouldn’t be the residents of Milwaukee at least not while we have potentially gorgeous commercial corridors within a stone’s throw of major jobs centers and densely populated neighborhoods that are in need of some re-investment.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0485872,-87.9297705,3a,75y,99.11h,80.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1spU3G6nGJujDtG1Gtp1SsDA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
As intriguing as the concept is…I can’t disagree with Michael (tho I can see the eventual appeal on the north side of river). It seems there are other competing and higher profile priorities that should be capitalized before we further develop that Menomonee corridor (unless their is clear stated interest for a large scale development). Let’s finish McKinley, the Inner Harbor, downtowns West Town, etc before starting the next development zone
I think I was a little too negative in that response. I just get fed up because the city is bursting with walkable commercial corridors, where if we gave them a “S. 5th Street treatment” (i.e. rebuilt road, made much wider sidewalks, streetscaping, pedestrian improvements) I have no doubt that they would flourish almost immediately. Vliet, Vallard, N 27th. For the price of building the off-ramps to even get people down into the Valley from the viaducts, we could really make a difference across several important neighborhood main streets.
In valley, St. Paul St. will continue to see investment since the building stock is good, there’s a collection of destination businesses, and it’s a straight shot into downtown. On the south side of the valley, Potawatomi and HD will continue to sprawl and catalyze some development around them. The floodplain/park toward Palermos was nicely done. But building entirely new streets plus connections in from the viaducts would be an absolute fortune. I say, let’s just do the small stuff on St. Paul and Canal Streets– adding street trees, public trash cans, improved street lighting, etc. Maybe in 15 years, it will be developed enough to warrant spending the 10s of millions.