A recent blitz of stories in the Business Journal on the Grand Avenue Mall offered the weekly’s usual, mathematically measured-out balance, but the gloom-and-doom quotes were what lingered. “I look like I’m in the dregs of somebody’s downtown area,” said Vicki Jessen, general manager of the Hampton Inn on Wisconsin Avenue.
One story noted that Grand Avenue has lost the Linens ’n Things, Dress Barn and Ritz Camera stores and needs to add some strong tenants. “I think Grand Avenue is going down the tubes and I don’t see it coming back for many, many years,” said Larry Reese, who has moved his venerable Van’s Fine Men’s Shoe Shop from Grand Avenue to West Allis.
Grand Avenue, of course, has been in decline since at least the early 1990s. Why? The article speculated it could be caused by real and perceived crime, the rise of online shopping, competition with suburban malls and the exodus of downtown workers.
Actually the crime rate is low downtown. Suburban shopping malls have always offered competition. As for the exodus of downtown workers, hasn’t that been made up for by the huge increase in people living downtown? The article noted an estimate by city officials that 3,200 new condo units were built between 2000 and 2006 (there’s been quite a bit more since) and that the downtown population is now 25,000. That’s a lot of upscale people who need places to shop. So why couldn’t Grand Avenue provide this?
A thoughtful essay by Alan Ehrenhalt in the September issue of Governing Magazine offered one answer. He noted that many downtowns are attracting new residents, restaurants and bars, but still lack places to shop. He referenced Milwaukee, Charlotte, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio, whose City Center went from nearly 100 retail tenants to “nearly empty.” It has been taken over by the local government, which has made little progress trying to revive it.
The problem, Ehrenhalt notes, is these cities have “something that imitates a suburban retail mall …But there isn’t any real streetfront …The evidence seems pretty clear that when people go downtown these days, they want to shop on the street.”
Indeed. Why drive downtown to shop at an imitation suburban mall when you can go to Mayfair or Southridge and get the real, un-urban thing? (You can even get the latest in what might be called Suburbia Moderne at the faux-urban Bayshore Town Center, with “streets” that look they were built as part of a Hollywood set.)
Where Milwaukee’s downtown has been successful, where it has lots of foot traffic, is in the Third Ward, on Water’s Street’s row of bars, and on the coolly contemporary strip of restaurants and bars on Milwaukee and Jefferson streets immediately north of Wisconsin Avenue. No enclosed malls there. Just buzzing, urban street scenes.
One source tells me the staff of Anthropologie has noted the national chain is doing as well in Milwaukee’s Third Ward as at any location in the country. Whether true or not (Amy Woodward, the Sphinx-like spokesperson for the company’s national office, said the company does not discuss such subjects), there’s little doubt the Third Ward has become a very hot place for retail shops.
The long-term and doubtless expensive lesson may be that an enclosed mall simply won’t work downtown. Grand Avenue may never revive until it’s an actual avenue.
The other lesson relates to a chunk of the freeway I’ve argued (echoing former Mayor John Norquist and others) should have been turned into a boulevard: the connection east of Plankinton Avenue leading toward the Hoan Bridge. Had this been done, there would now be no separation between the Third Ward and the Milwaukee-Jefferson streets area that has been revived. And should the state come up with a viable, cheaper plan to bring the Hoan Bridge down to street level, this idea would make even more sense.
Green Hypocrisy
Maybe I’m just burned because the Cubs have so outclassed the Brewers this year, but I was struck by a story last week about Chicago dumping an incredible 90 billion gallons of storm/sewage runoff into Lake Michigan.
This is more than five times the amount of overflows dumped by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District in the entire history of the Deep Tunnel: Since it went online in 1994, the total amount of overflows has been about 18.7 billion gallons. In 2006, for instance, Chicago dumped 16 times more wastewater than Milwaukee. And unlike Milwaukee, Chicago doesn’t disinfect its effluent, which makes its overflows all the worse of a polluter.
And yet the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes has joined with the Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers to sue, for the second time, the MMSD. The action by the Friends I understand, but why is the Alliance going after Milwaukee when there’s a far bigger target in its own front yard?
Joel Brammeier, vice president for policy for the Alliance, notes that much of Chicago’s ever-massive overflows get dumped into the Illinois and Mississippi rivers rather than Lake Michigan. And after all, his group is concerned with the Great Lakes.
He says his group has pushed for Chicago to begin disinfecting the effluent (but doesn’t note any legal action taken). And he expresses outrage over the latest dumping into the lake. “It’s an absurd amount. It’s almost incomprehensible how much that is,” he says.
Perhaps it’s time for his group to start comprehending it. The truth is that Milwaukee’s system, whatever its flaws, is far more efficient than that of most big cities. Maybe Chicago’s greens should aim some of their legal fire a little closer to home.
The Buzz
-Successful or not, Anthropologie doesn’t seem to like any press. The store here kicked out a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter.
-Whoops, did Mayor Tom Barrett goof? In reaction to the Sunday JS story on subprime mortgages going bad in Milwaukee, he said, "I used to say it was better to invest in the city of Milwaukee than the stock market. It’s pick your poison now." Not the best way to cheerlead for the city.
-Milwaukee’s new East Side Ald. Nik Kovac, elected largely because of voter outrage over a proposed Downer Avenue high-rise that spilled into opposition to UW-Milwaukee expansion, is learning perhaps that development isn’t always so bad. He has come out in favor of UWM’s proposed dormitory, yet another one, this time to be built on Humboldt and North. Kovac spoke positively to the Business Journal about the “neighborhood buffer” the site enjoys because it’s not contiguous to residential properties.
-Last Wednesday, Wisconsin Attorney General JB Van Hollen told the press he did not discuss his lawsuit against the state Government Accountability Board with any Republican Party official and had “no reason to believe” any of his aides did so. Apparently his staff is sneaking around behind his back. The next day, the Justice Department conceded two of its attorneys, including the lead attorney on the lawsuit, talked to Republican officials a week before filing the suit. So is the Journal Sentinel going to request all e-mails regarding this, as it routinely does of any potential scandal involving the administration of Gov. Jim Doyle? And when will the newspaper correct the frequent statement that federal law required all voting files to be double checked as of January 2006. The law required this as of 2004, but federal bureaucrats allowed an extension for a state like Wisconsin to January 2006. So why can’t they allow another extension to August 2008, given that the municipal and county election officials say this was needed?
And is Aaron Rodgers better than Brett Favre, even when the Packers lose? The Sports Nut says so.
