When Boris Gokhman came to Milwaukee from the Ukraine in 1990, he quickly saw what was the most desirable residential area. “The second day I was here I knew that Downer was the best place to live,” he recalls.
The area around Downer Avenue, the heart of the upper East Side, was the first place that wealthy Milwaukeeans like the Uihleins and Harnischfegers drove to in their cars. It became the elite neighborhood, with an easy and pleasurable commute to Downtown. Nestled into a triangle that’s bounded by the Milwaukee River on the west and the lake on the east, its longest open border is with Shorewood to the north.
This insulated Downer from the rest of the city, helping it maintain its splendor and property-tax values even as white flight and urban blight undermined post-1950s Milwaukee.
But in recent years, the Downer Avenue retail strip, which had thrived since the 1920s, stagnated and then declined. The empty building that once housed the Coffee Trader seemed to symbolize a street where businesses were struggling. Some owners felt the area needed more development to bring life back to the street and more customers to their doors. Gokhman, who had purchased many of the Downer Avenue buildings and now lived in the neighborhood, could see the problem.
“Every old business that has been here for years has either closed their doors or is not doing as well as five years ago,” he notes.
Gokhman’s solution – one that would also enable him to make money on condo development – was to build a high-rise, an 11-story property just off Downer Avenue that would bring more customers to the area. His proposal quickly had the neighborhood up in arms. Resident Edward jj Olson, a leader of the opposition, declared that the development would “destroy the character of the neighborhood.”
At issue was far more than one neighborhood. Until now, the redevelopment of the city had occurred within the old boundaries of the city, circa 1900, from Brewers Hill on the north across to Walker’s Point on the south. Development had flourished in abandoned industrial areas, which had few residents to complain. But as these areas filled in, developers were turning to well-established areas where residents were more likely to oppose change.
The battle over Downer Avenue, in short, stands as a test case of whether the momentum of Milwaukee’s redevelopment can be maintained – whether the old city will defeat the new. The battle exposed some real problems with the city’s approach to these issues, namely a lack of leadership by Mayor Tom Barrett and a lack of planning by the Department of City Development. There’s already a sense among some developers that Milwaukee is losing its way on these issues. The Downer debacle could be a preview of more problems to come – or a lesson to be learned in how to make Milwaukee a great city.
In the mid-1990s, developer Paul Dincin attended a conference in Chicago where one of the guest speakers was John Norquist, then Milwaukee’s mayor. Dincin, whose Chicago-based Tandem Developers had built only in its home city and Minneapolis, was blown away.
“That’s how we got interested in building in Milwaukee,” Dincin recalls. “Norquist’s enthusiasm … he was into it, this urban vibe and getting it going. Milwaukee was way ahead of Minneapolis. It is unique and wonderful because the city had a vision.”
It wasn’t that way in the early years under Norquist. The city he took over in 1988 had vast swatches of blight and no idea how to proceed. Its lack of progress preserved a few strengths. “Milwaukee has great warehouse buildings, existing neighborhoods – which are essential – that are older and have their own identifiable character,” Dincin notes.
Norquist hadn’t seen urban landscape and architecture as an issue for the mayor’s office. But over time, he learned from urban theorists like Jane Jacobs, who promoted the idea that density, mixed-use development and connectivity made cities great economic engines and cultural centers. He took Jacobs to heart and laid out a new urban garden, pulling out weeds like the Milwaukee River Dam and the Park East Freeway. He fertilized, adding the RiverWalk development, which revealed the Milwaukee River to be an asset instead of a sewer, and the new Sixth Street Viaduct, which went down to, rather than over, the Menomonee Valley. Quotidian details, like speeding up the process at City Hall for developers – making it less than a two-year ordeal to get an outdoor cafe – were very important.
Norquist hired Peter Park, a young urban planner, to make a blueprint for a 21st century city. His plan to develop the “Beerline” along Commerce Avenue, a desolate road with a few vestiges of the industrial revolution, turned heads and opened eyes. The intelligence and depth of the plan inspired developers. In just a few years, condos filled the entire length of the street, setting a new standard for development in Milwaukee.
One of those projects is The Edge, a glassy 133-unit development along the river built by Dincin and Tandem Developers. Its promotional materials declare that “history is being replaced by the future … the perfect balance of urban sophistication and luxury riverfront living.”
Dincin credits the city for the success of the Beerline. “Norquist had a planning department that was so knowledgeable,” Dincin notes.
Park was tough, but his suggestions resulted in better buildings, Dincin says. “They were very opinionated and made us change a lot of things. It usually ended up better, but I hate to admit it sometimes.”
If private developers benefited from Norquist’s vision, the mayor also learned from the private sector. Gokhman’s Lyon Court Condominiums at 1515 N. Van Buren St. was a revelation in 1988. He just built it. Gokhman didn’t speak English well enough to pull the political strings or wrangle some tax incremental financing.
While it was still under construction, developer Barry Mandel asked to tour the building. According to Gokhman, Mandel was incredulous that anyone would build something like this without a complicated public-private partnership. Gokhman just rubbed a few sticks together and made money.
No one in town thought real estate could stand on its own. Gokhman showed there was a real market for urban development in Milwaukee. “When I was at Mandel, we always considered Boris our most dynamic competitor,” says Blair Williams, who now runs his own development firm.
Private-sector leadership, informed and empowered by city officials, also helped the Third Ward spring to life. Strong community leadership from the Historic Third Ward Association helped realize a detailed development plan that put Park’s ideas into practice.
The plan calls for mixed-use development between 30 and 110 units per acre. The street is reserved for retail, restaurants and other pedestrian-friendly uses. Skywalks are prohibited. Green architecture is encouraged. Classic old buildings are preserved, yet the plan makes room for incongruous development of six “landmark” sites for which there are no height or style restrictions. (To date, no such signature building has been proposed.)
The potential density of the plan is breathtaking by Milwaukee standards: up to 75,000 residents per square mile. That’s comparable to Chicago’s River North or Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhoods. At that average level of density, Milwaukee’s population would be about 6 million.
The Third Ward’s redevelopment was possible because, at the time, it had only about 200 residents and many empty or underused warehouses. There was no one to object to the changes.
The Third Ward also created a review board with knowledgeable architects who elevated the conversation between developers and the public. “Architects are scared when they present to the Third Ward’s Architecture Review Board,” says architect Jim Shields, “because they are going to be challenged; the board is smart and decisive.”
The result has been higher-quality buildings, streetscapes and public spaces, and a higher quality of life.
Since 1998, the value of all condos in Milwaukee rose 520 percent. The initial estimate of the value of Park East development was $250 million. That seemed fanciful at the time. Now it’s more like $1 billion, about the same as the total equalized value of Shorewood or Cedarburg. The RiverWalk produced a few billion dollars in taxable property.
The core business of a city is real estate. Nothing is accomplished – good schools, well-paved roads, strong police and fire departments – without revenue to pay for it. Norquist kept his eye on the ball and helped developers increase Milwaukee’s value.
His successor, Tom Barrett, is another matter. Developers describe him as lacking knowledge and interest in development issues. “He’s not out there leading the charge,” says one.
“I don’t think the built environment is at the top of his agenda,” says Alderman Mike D’Amato.
One longtime development insider puts it this way: “It is a problem if you have a mayor who doesn’t understand the city’s core business.”
Some observers say the redevelopment of Downtown’s Park East sector has gone more slowly because of Barrett’s indecisiveness. They also say Park’s half-time successor as city planner, Bob Greenstreet, is not a trained planner and may be spread too thin by his other job as dean of UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning. “He’s not as strong with design principles and more into micromanaging,” says one developer.
If the Barrett administration so far shows less ability with handling development, it also faces a more complex challenge than Norquist did. As developers have filled in areas where there were no residents to oppose change, like Commerce Avenue and the Third Ward, they have moved on to neighborhoods like Downer Avenue, where strong leadership will be all the more essential.
Michael and Jean Fleet came to Milwaukee from Los Angeles in 1976 and immediately bought a home on Prospect Avenue, not far from the Downer Avenue retail strip. “It’s very Milwaukee, but a little swishier,” as Michael Fleet describes the area. “There are people who came from New York and California in the neighborhood.” He is a political science professor at Marquette University and Jean is a history teacher at Riverside High School. They have an interest in culture and often walk to the Downer and Oriental theaters to see movies.
The neighborhood is like a faculty lounge for the professorial class, a sanctuary for the elite who are too urbane to move to the suburbs. Scott Kindness, architect of the proposed new high-rise on Downer Avenue, has lived there since grad school. Park lived there, as does Greenstreet. The neighborhood has Milwaukee’s greatest concentration of architects, intellectuals, wealth and
cultural ambition.
Lake Park is just 500 yards to the east of Downer Avenue. Newberry Boulevard to the north, a regal extension of Lake Park, gracefully rolls three-fourths of a mile to Riverside Park and the Milwaukee River. The parks and boulevard were products of the “City Beautiful” movement at the turn of the century. The neighborhood narrows and flows south onto Lincoln Memorial Drive, a two-mile glide to Downtown along the lake, passing the Milwaukee Yacht Club, marina, beautiful beaches, the lagoon and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Bluffs rise on the west; the lake glows on the east.
There may beno better five-minute drive to Downtown in any city in America. It’s the only ride from the edge to the center of Milwaukee that blissfully bypasses any hint of urban dissipation.
The neighborhood is naturally urban, diverse and well-connected. It’s just a short walk to a university, two parks, the lake, a marina, a hospital, two movie theaters and three shopping districts. There is a mix of rental, single-family, duplex and multifamily dwellings, and a gradation of economic classes and generations. The neighborhood is an economic powerhouse with more than 3.5 times the buying power of Whitefish Bay, the affluent suburb to the north.
Downer Avenue itself has been a retail strip since the 1920s, when it was home to several auto repair garages, Moody’s Billiards, the Progressive Music School, three butchers, two bakeries, a sweet shop, a bookstore, two drug stores, a grocery store and the Milwaukee Motor School. In later years, it had Sendik’s, a movie theater, the best art gallery in town, and Milwaukee’s first hip coffee shop, the Coffee Trader.
But by last year, the street was 80 percent vacant above the ground floor, and had been for as long as anyone could remember. On the street level, businesses like Einstein’s Bagels, the Chancery, and two different establishments by successful restaurant owner Joe Bartolotta had failed. Sendik’s was losing business to Whole Foods and Sendik’s on Oakland, and there are rumors it could close. Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops put out a memo to other businesses revealing it had lost $125,000 at its Downer Avenue store in 2006.
Mike Eitel, co-owner of the Café Hollander, is among those retailers who support development to bring in more customers. “The retailers need the traffic and all the things that make a healthy, multiuse neighborhood.”
For years, many of the Downer Avenue buildings had been owned by Dan Katz, who had let the retail scene dissipate. But in 2005, Katz sold all the buildings to Gokhman, who hired Kindness to create a development plan. This included renovating the uninhabited upper floors of buildings, a new parking garage, and an 11-story condominium development on Stowell Avenue, one block west of Downer. D’Amato, the alderman for the neighborhood and a fan of redevelopment who says he learned much about this from Norquist, supported the plan.
Neighborhood opponents quickly created the Committee for Balanced Development. Michael Fleet stood in front of Sendik’s for six straight Saturdays getting signatures on a petition to oppose the project. Opponents honed in on the issue of the building’s height, arguing it was out of character for the neighborhood.
“This 11-story building is a backdoor rezoning for the entire neighborhood and will set a precedent for future high-rise development,” warned Olson, addressing his neighbors in a meeting at St. Mark’s Church. “Have no illusions, if this building is built, then our unique urban village will look like the high-rise towers built along lower Prospect Avenue.”
The neighbors talked of boycotting merchants in favor of the plan. Accusations
flew, and a series of public meetings ended badly. “Ninety percent of the brain damage I went through on this project,” Kindness says, “was a result of lies and irrelevant information.”
The objections got very personal, with Gokhman’s heritage being attacked. At one public meeting, a woman stood up and complained, “This is not the Soviet Union; this is not Eastern Europe.”
Not all residents opposed the building. Young urbanites who didn’t remember the glory days of the Coffee Trader and liked the idea of a hipper, more urban scene argued in favor of redevelopment. Businesses in the area also were divided.
But the strength of the opposition forced Kindness and Gokhman to offer numerous architectural compromises. Kindness moved the proposed tower toward Downer, and tapered and blended it with the buildings on the street. They added a hotel to go along with the condos. They changed some exterior materials in an attempt to camouflage the fact that this was an 11-story building in an older neighborhood. There were some improvements, but most of the changes muddied the design.
The process culminated in a showdown before the city Planning Commission at a packed meeting in March. Kindness explained how his project addressed the public’s concerns, and as he got to the height issue, jeers and incredulous looks greeted him.
Ultimately, the commission and the Common Council unanimously ratified the project. The neighborhood was divided. But the district’s alderman and the Department of City Development favored the project. Barrett stayed out of the fray and avoided the issue publicly.
The result could have been worse. Just filling in the blanks and inhabiting Downer from the ground up will make an enormous difference. The new condos will give those who love the neighborhood a place to live after they become empty nesters. More density and parking will animate the street and help the merchants. Downer will prosper without losing all of its faded gentility.
But both sides are bitterly disappointed. “We didn’t feel this plan knew anything about us or cared anything about us,” Fleet complains. “All the meetings were cooked. We were shown the plan and then given five minutes to complain. It was all adversarial, confrontational and managed.”
Gokhman and Kindness were also disappointed. They had been playing defense so long that they felt they were not able to do their best work. Nor was Greenstreet happy about the result.
“This is not about good architecture; it’s now a political building,” Greenstreet
told Kindness.
When asked what he thought of the revised development, Barrett switched the subject to the sensitivities of the community. “It was a very good exercise in urban planning. It shows we have a generational shift going on. I think a lot of people who had concerns with it, who have good intentions, loved the Downer as it was when they moved into the neighborhood. Again, these are wonderful people and they are socially involved. I love Downer Avenue, I love the popcorn wagon, the bookstore and theater.”
Barrett’s sole concern was how to manage the political battle rather than the design process. The right design for him was whatever created a political compromise.
“We followed the process,” said Vanessa Koster, a planner at the Department of City Development. “I wouldn’t have done anything differently.” If anything, she added, “we go above and beyond the rules” to involve the public.
But the process seems better at creating noise than architecture. A prominent architect summed up the result: “When you get the neighborhood involved, the answer is always ‘No!’”
Whitefish Bay recently rejected an excellent development that Gokhman and Kindness proposed on Silver Spring Drive. There are tussles to come for Oakland Avenue in both Milwaukee and Shorewood. The wrong decisions can have consequences. Just as Downer Avenue retail has been losing out to Brady Street, North Avenue and the Third Ward, Milwaukee can lose to other cities. Less architecture ultimately means less value.
Linda Keane, an architect and environmental designer, notes the difficulty of redeveloping in established neighborhoods. “A plan without leadership is doomed to failure. So is leadership without a plan.”
The Downer debacle showed Milwaukee lacked both: a plan and a leader. Unlike what was done for the Third Ward or the Beerline, there was no fine-grained public planning process in place to anticipate the concerns that arose on Downer. Without such a plan, there was no way for residents to know how the pieces fit together – that one tall building would not become a high-rise forest, or how Downer’s retail area might connect to the burgeoning development around North and Prospect avenues.
Nor was there any commitment by the mayor to the creation of great architecture. It was as if Barrett couldn’t see the building on Downer, except for the political shadow it cast on the faces of the community.
The design community was aghast when Barrett told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel prior to his election that the biggest design challenge was “potholes.” Later he was caught off guard and supported a suburban-styled gated community in Milwaukee. Barrett’s supporters say “he is learning.” But is he?
“Dialogue about design and urbanization of the city has to start from the very top,” says Park, now the city planner for Denver. “What made my job possible was knowing Norquist got it and was willing to expend political capital.”
Across the country, cities are undergoing a renaissance that raises these kinds of issues. The great cities will maximize this revival’s momentum. The losers will lag behind.
“They wanted the future to be the past,” says D’Amato of the naysayers in the Downer Avenue neighborhood. “We wanted the future to be the future.”
What kind of future does the mayor envision for us? How will he and his planners get us there? The past 15 years have proven that architecture can often rise to the occasion in Milwaukee. But city officials have to rise to the challenge, too.
Tom Bamberger is a frequent contributor to Milwaukee Magazine. He may be reached via letters@milwaukeemagazine.com.
