More Parking, Traffic Flow for East Side

It’s about to be a little bit easier to get around Milwaukee’s Lower East Side.

The city is advancing a plan to convert one-way N. Arlington Pl. to two-way traffic from N. Warren Ave. to E. Brady St. The proposal, to be heard at Friday’s meeting of the Public Safety and Health Committee, would eliminate angled parking on the .1-mile stretch of Arlington and allow drivers and cyclists to once again go north on the street.

“We get a two-way street and more parking. It almost sounds too good to be true,” said Alderman Nik Kovac in an interview. In fact, it gets even better for the city. A developer, not taxpayers, will foot the bill. “It was a developer request that we thought was a good idea anyway,” said the alderman.

The proposed change originated with Klein Development, which is developing The Easton apartment building at the street’s southern end. Without the change, anyone entering the building’s parking garage would have had to come from E. Brady St. before heading south on Arlington Pl. or illegally cross a Y-shaped intersection. The city approved a zoning change for the project in May 2017 with the understanding that the street was to be converted to two-way traffic.

The angled parking, currently available only on the street’s east side, will be replaced with parallel parking on both sides.

The street grid near N. Arlington Pl. features a number of angled intersections and short streets due to the merging of the diagonal street grid that follows Lake Michigan with the traditional north-south, east-west street grid that emanates from Downtown. The area has a number of one-way streets, partially in response to resident concerns about cars speeding through narrow side streets. Others, like Prospect and Farwell avenues, serve as main arterials.

But Arlington was always a particularly unique case because it was immediately east of a parallel one-way southbound street, N. Franklin Pl. “It was really weird that we had two one ways in the same direction leaving Brady,” said Kovac. “[The change] makes it slightly less weird.”

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About The Easton

The Easton, a five-story, 96-unit apartment building, is nearly complete. Developed by Klein Development, Inc., the project is being developed on a 43,560-square-foot lot that runs from N. Franklin Pl. to N. Arlington Pl. Eppstein Uhen Architects is leading the project’s design, while CD Smith is leading the general contracting. The property will be managed by Founders 3.

Rent for a one-bedroom unit starts at $1,420 per month, with a two-bedroom starting at $1,920 per month according to the leasing website.

The leasing website touts a range of amenities from a yoga room to a “commercial quality” fitness center. But residents will lease units in the building as much for what’s outside of the building as what’s inside of it. It’s located a block from E. Brady St. and everything the east side main street offers. It’s also just two blocks from the eastern end of The Hop and a number of bus routes, should the 20-minute walk to Downtown prove too long.

For more on the project, see our latest coverage in a December edition of Friday Photos.

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Related Legislation: File 181803