It wasn’t so long ago that people who built housing in the city of Milwaukee were called “urban pioneers.” It was a utopian proposition.
Not anymore.
Now that people are making money on city real estate, Milwaukee is attracting all kinds of developers, even amateur architects. For example, River Renaissance, a new building in the Third Ward on North Water and East Erie streets. It raised the ire of neighbors and former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel architectural critic Whitney Gould. The usually mild-mannered developer Barry Mandel, one of the urban pioneers, posted Gould’s critique on his Web site in order to shame the development.
So who’s to blame for the design? That’s a bit of a mystery. The media has credited developer Robert Schultz and his Third Coast Design Concepts as the architect, but when I asked him what designs he or the company had ever done, he couldn’t name one. His company is “in transition,” he explained. As for River Renaissance, Schultz said that, actually, he worked with another architect – Stephen Smith. But when I called Smith, he took pains to minimize his involvement. “It’s not my design,” he said.
But this design that no architect wants the credit for got past the venerable Third Ward Design Architectural Review Board. According to a member of the board, Schultz and his allies were incredibly persistent. “There were more than a dozen meetings over a year and just as many plans proposed. The architect didn’t have the skills to do it. Adjustment after adjustment didn’t make a difference. He just wore us down.”
The result is a building whose entrance “is punctuated by a decorative marble column,” that’s intended to distinguish this building from its competitors, according to the River Renaissance Web site. A little bit of extra stone was all it took. Sort of like the way Applebee’s is different than Denny’s. Just add the word “balsamic” to the menu.
Its proportions are bloated like a suburban McMansion. This building is neither square, vertical nor horizontal. It looks like they started out with a scheme for the facade, but ran out of arched windows. The finishings are haphazard and exceptionally crude. The porches are overgrown and cover the building like kudzu.
The Design Review Board is rethinking how to interpret its guidelines to assure nothing like this ever goes up again in the Third Ward. Well, that’s a good idea.
Directly to the southwest on the other side of the river is “First Place on the River,” by Eppstein Uhen Architects. EUA is efficient, the go-to firm in Milwaukee for anyone who wants an above-average product. EUA is a machine.
First Place, to the contrary, is a mess. It is a remodeling and expansion of the former Terminal Storage Co. project that went haywire financially and is now in receivership.
The east faade of First Place rambles across what seems like three buildings. It’s fantastically large and complex. There are seven different window treatments in various configurations. I don’t think there’s any way to make sense of all the moving parts. It seems ill-considered, almost spur of the moment. No one would start with a blank canvas and do anything like this on purpose.
Still, the forms are fun, animated and spontaneous. First Place could easily be overbearing, yet it floats above the river. This misbegotten project has enough charm to overcome its cheap materials and unfinished west face.
Finally, just to the south is another recent project, that “yellow” building. You can’t miss it.
When a building becomes a color, it is usually a problem. No one wants to be just a color – the guy with the red nose, the lady with that green dress.
Yet the development, an office building entitled “Casting Point,” has a lot going for it. It sits on a dynamic triangular site at the intersection of First and Pittsburgh. It has a venturesome modern design by Falamak Nourzad of Continuum Architects. It uses contemporary materials in an innovative way and has a sophisticated architectural language.
But somehow this smart architecture got off track. The design reminds me of a thin person who unwittingly dresses to look fat. Casting Point seems to be self-conscious of its shape and does whatever it can to disguise the inherent power of its triangle.
It also has some alienating eccentricities. It needs a real entrance on First Street, but instead, they put it on the back of the building. The “Maritime Savings Bank” sign is attached like a sticky note. (Someone has to figure out how to put signs on modern buildings.) And the building doesn’t grasp its site. From the back, it feels jammed in and just falls flat into a parking lot.
At first I thought it was a noble failure. But now, it’s backgrounded to the east by pallid yellow-green apartments that, to make matters worse, are covered with an unconvincing sort of urban frosting. The entire effect is so faint that it creates an appetite for something more saturated. More yellow please, you find yourself saying, and Casting Point certainly delivers. The counterpoint helps the project but hurts the building.
It turns out the entire development was a combined project – both the apartments and Casting Point – by Tim Dixon. That makes me think this project might have been overthought. Maybe the buildings didn’t need to look so much like a matching outfit.
Still, it is the best of times in the city. Ten years ago, no one could have imagined three new buildings would spring up so close to each other. Now, there is enough money to make ambitious mistakes and happy accidents that architects are learning from and debating. That’s how a real city grows.
