Tour Milwaukee’s Eco Neighborhood

While Yelp will guide you to Jake’s Deli or The Tandem restaurant, it’s not going to lead you to the nearby community gardens, green infrastructure projects and other neighborhood landmarks.

That’s why a partnership of the Walnut Way Conservation Corp. and the city’s Environmental Collaboration Office (ECO) partnered to make a map of everything that’s happening in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood.

The partners, along with 17 other organizations, gathered last week at the Fondy Farmers Market, to celebrate the completion of four new solar arrays, multiple bioswales and a host of other environmentally-sustainable improvements.

The projects, funded in part by a $150,000 grant from Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities, are part of an effort to brand the neighborhood as an environmentally-friendly place and draw eco-tourism. But unless you had the paper guide distributed at the event, you weren’t going to be able to figure out where all these things are.

The EcoTour map, now available online, highlights the many projects centered around N. 17th St. and W. North Ave. It reflects the neighborhood’s status as the city’s first eco-neighborhood, a designation bestowed by the city’s ECO team on neighborhoods committed to sustainable change.

The map serves as a guide to see the area’s fruit orchards, bioswales, and solar arrays, but also will guide you to The Shindig (formerly the Juice Kitchen) for a smoothie or Ezekiel Gillespie Park for fresh raspberries.

The map was designed by Terrell Morgan. The signs dotting the area were created by Tim McCollow, Erica Heisdorf Bisquerra and Jeremy Davis.

Want a paper copy? You can pick one up at Walnut Way’s office on N. 17th St. or at a host of other neighborhood organizations.

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