No Milwaukee Department of City Development Commissioner had ever survived an election. When a new mayor takes office, he wants his own appointee in that crucial position – overseeing new development projects, attracting businesses, growing neighborhoods, expanding housing.
Lafayette Crump broke that trend. He was appointed to the position by former Mayor Tom Barrett in 2020, and when Cavalier Johnson won the 2022 mayoral election after serving as acting mayor for four months, he kept Crump at the head of DCD.
“I think that speaks volumes,” says Rocky Marcoux, who served in the role for 16 years before Crump. “The DCD commissioner and the mayor have to be absolutely in sync. … I think that’s Mayor Johnson saying, ‘You know what? This guy knows what he’s doing.’”
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Crump, 51, and Johnson share biographical similarities – they’re both Black men raised in Milwaukee holding powerful civic positions – but a stronger similarity is in their ideas for the city. Both have monumental, ambitious, sometimes controversial goals. Johnson has emphatically declared his mission to nearly double Milwaukee’s population to 1 million. Development is crucial to making that reality, whether it’s building the housing to accommodate these people or attracting the employers and amenities that will bring them here.
“Commissioner Crump is a dedicated public servant who really understands the assignment for the department that he leads,” Johnson says. “Whether that’s working to make sure that we’re advancing some of my own goals for population growth, whether that’s investing in plans to make sure Milwaukeeans have access to more housing … whether that’s working to make sure that the city of Milwaukee is an attractive place [for] businesses. … I think he’s done a pretty remarkable job.”
Simultaneously, Crump has made it clear, even before he was appointed, that he didn’t want to be a DCD commissioner only for Downtown. “Downtown is the epicenter, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only place where things can happen,” Crump says. “Downtown is a catalyst for things that are happening all over the city.”
In Crump’s vision, Milwaukee grows dramatically, businesses return to Downtown, affordable housing becomes increasingly available, and every neighborhood – including traditionally underserved ones – experiences new and beneficial development. Now he’s been in power for four years. How have those lofty goals shaped up? And what is he expecting in the years ahead?
CRUMP DESCRIBES Downtown development as a centerpiece for citywide growth – businesses, jobs, new buildings, restaurants and excitement that ripple outward, leading to less splashy, but still significant, development in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The list of major Downtown projects completed or launched during his tenure is undeniable: apartments like the 333 and The Couture; Vel R. Phillips Plaza; the Northwestern Mutual expansion, the expanded Baird Center, Third Street Market Hall and more.
But other areas have seen development, as well. To the north on West Capitol Drive, Century City Business Park has slowly but surely been attracting jobs back to the 30th Street Corridor. The park’s main building, Century City I, built in 2016, is now completely occupied. Cheryl Blue, the executive director of the 30th Street Corridor Corp., says that the group is now considering constructing a new building in the park.
“My experience with [DCD] has been very good,” Blue says. “They seem more open and willing to be collaborative and supportive of all the work we’re doing. … [Crump] has set a good tone for the Department of City Development, not just for Downtown but for the work that has to be done on the North Side.”
IT GRABS FEWER headlines than soaring luxury apartment towers, but affordable housing is an aspect of DCD’s mission that Crump has repeatedly emphasized. Milwaukee is experiencing some of the fastest-rising rent prices in the country. According to Rent.com, Milwaukee’s median rent price in March 2024 was $1,835, with the metro area rising 6.39% over the past year. “An important part of [growing the population] is ensuring that everybody has a place that they’re happy to call home,” Crump says. “And we’ve got to do that in a way … that’s not ultimately displacing other people.”
Between 2021-23, Milwaukee saw 3,737 new housing units built, including 1,300 new affordable homes. With Blue and the 30th Street Corridor, DCD helped rehabilitate 24 units of affordable housing in the Garden Homes neighborhood. And DCD is working with a development group to convert the former Carleton Elementary School on Silver Spring Drive into 48 apartments, using low-income housing tax credits from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority.
Those efforts run in tandem with DCD’s Homes MKE project. Crump’s department has $15 million in Federal American Rescue Plan Act funds dedicated to renovating vacant tax-foreclosed housing and returning them to the market, with a goal of reoccupying 150 vacant homes. As of early January, the city had 123 properties in its inventory. Forty-five of those houses had been fully renovated – with 30 sold and five about to hit market – and 30 were under renovation.
“I think that is going to be key to the city’s success. … To restore the density that already existed in the city, you have to build back what we’ve lost over time,” Marcoux says.
ONE OF CRUMP’S efforts that’s been met with more halting approval is the monumental task of restoring density in a hollowed-out Milwaukee. DCD projects the city will face a shortage of 35,000 housing units by 2040. The Growing MKE plan is a crucial step in avoiding that. Growing MKE updates the city’s housing policy plan – the guiding documents that lay the groundwork for future changes.
The complex plan, put simply, recommends altering the zoning code to allow more housing in more areas. Some areas zoned for single-family houses would be opened to duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and accessory units, and a unit-per-lot-size ratio would be removed to allow for the development of larger apartment buildings in commercial areas. Rezoning, Crump argues, would make it easier for developers to build – and for smaller-scale owners to expand their single housing units – increasing inventory and lowering costs for renters and homebuyers.
“We want to have housing opportunities of every stripe and at multiple price points throughout the city,” Crump says. “Having zoning changes that give owners as well as people who would invest throughout our city some certainty about what we would allow in certain locations is a key part of that. If that certainty does not exist, those who would invest and help build up our city will … spend their resources in other places where they can find that certainty.”
“We want to have housing opportunities of every stripe and at multiple price points throughout the city.”
– Lafayette Crump
Columbus, Austin and other fast-growing cities are in the midst of similar efforts – none without controversy. At a five-hour hearing before the City Plan Commission in July, central city residents protested Growing MKE, arguing that the city had ignored their needs in drafting the plan. Melody McCurtis, the deputy director of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, has been one of the most vocal critics. She says that DCD did not adequately engage community members before presenting the plan.
“Right now, it just feels like if the mayor says he wants to do this, that’s it. And there’s no room for the people who live in this city, who make up this city, who have raised their kids in this city, whose whole family has come up in this city. Those folks are just as important,” says McCurtis.
As of early December, she says the draft of Growing MKE fails to adequately address Milwaukee’s history of redlining; opens the door for predatory development; and would cause taxes to rise. The biggest change she’d like to see is the addition of neighborhood approval for all development projects. “Our community deserves to benefit from any and all development,” she says. By early January, community members had begun calling for the plan to be replaced by one “co-created” with residents to emphasize equity.
Proponents of the plan argue that the big changes it recommends reflect the urgency of the need.
“Milwaukee is in a housing crisis,” says Montavius Jones, a member of the technical advisory committee for Growing MKE, a principal with Narvarte Development, and a former DCD economic development specialist under Marcoux. “We have one of the fastest growing rental rates in the country. We have one of the highest gaps in home ownership between Black and white households. And we have policies that make addressing those issues harder. … We won’t solve this crisis without a broader zoning code. Growing MKE is a key piece in addressing our crisis.”
Crump says that the backlash showed him the importance of constant community outreach. DCD has been adjusting the plan since that meeting, holding listening sessions to engage residents and collect feedback. If Growing MKE is adopted, the zoning code changes would still need to be approved by the Common Council. And if all goes according to plan, as Crump hopes, Milwaukee would be one step closer to that monumental million.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE, Crump’s priorities are the completion and expansion of efforts he’s already begun – renovating and reoccupying more houses with Homes MKE, achieving the Greater MKE zoning change plans and attracting more employers to Wisconsin. And the end goal of that development, he hopes, is a better city for everyone.
“There’s been opportunity for me to ensure that many other people who were similarly situated as myself – growing up Black in the inner city of Milwaukee – can do even greater than I’ve done,” Crump says. “I want to see this city be a city that supports all the young people here across racial and ethnic lines, and really be a city that can help all of its young people thrive. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get there, but I think we’re putting a lot of pieces in place to make that happen.”
