The fix-or-farewell debate over I-794 could help reshape the future of Downtown Milwaukee, but the debate itself is shaped largely by the history of southeastern Wisconsin freeways.
It’s a history in which transportation decisions have been tangled with politics, urbanism, regional rivalries and racial divisions. Some of those factors already have surfaced in I-794 discussions.
The east-west segment of I-794, one of the last freeways built in Milwaukee County, is nearly half a century old, leading the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to consider whether it should be rebuilt or replaced.
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City officials want the state to raze the freeway spur to stimulate development and remove a barrier between the Third Ward and the rest of Downtown. That position is part of the city’s new Downtown plan, approved unanimously by the Common Council on July 31 and signed by Mayor Cavalier Johnson on Aug. 2.
State Transportation Secretary Craig Thompson has framed the issue as a choice between freeing valuable land for new buildings – which the Milwaukee Department of City Development estimates could be worth more than $500 million – or allowing drivers to continue swiftly bypassing Downtown. South suburban officials argue I-794 is an important connection for their constituents, as well as for Port Milwaukee and Bay View.
WisDOT is studying nine options: One to rebuild portions not already reconstructed between 2013 and 2016, but otherwise leave the stretch in its current form; six to upgrade and reconfigure on- and off-ramps in various ways; and two to remove all or most of the highway between the Marquette Interchange and the Lake Interchange, where the east-west stretch meets the Hoan Bridge. The department has not yet calculated the costs of each option.
One removal option would end the freeway at N. 2nd Street. The other would end the freeway at N. 6th Street, but add I-43 on- and off-ramps at 2nd Street, near the current N. Plankinton Avenue exit from I-794. Either way, most east-west traffic would flow onto Clybourn Street, which would become a two-way boulevard, and St. Paul Avenue.
All six upgrade options would remove the N. Broadway on-ramp and N. Milwaukee Street off-ramp. All upgrade or removal options also would redesign Lake Interchange ramps rebuilt seven years ago – because drivers complain the new configuration is confusing – and would rearrange streets near that interchange, although specifics could evolve as the study continues.
Except for the Lake Interchange ramps, no option would physically change the Hoan Bridge, where the deck was replaced as part of the previous $239 million project. But demolishing east-west I-794 would cut off the Hoan from the rest of the interstate highway system, and the bridge no longer would be designated as north-south I-794, says WisDOT southeast regional spokesman Dan Sellers. Instead, the Hoan could become part of Wisconsin Highway 794, the designation for the Lake Parkway.
In the past, reducing interstate highway miles could have cut federal highway aid, Sellers says. However, that’s not a factor in the current aid formula, says Nancy Singer, a spokeswoman for the Federal Highway Administration.
Wisconsin also won’t have to repay federal money used to build I-794, under the highway agency’s guidelines for decommissioning interstates. By contrast, the county could have been forced to repay federal transit aid when it razed the Downtown Transit Center to clear space for The Couture, but that prospect was avoided when the city built a streetcar line to a new transit concourse in the multipurpose development.
Notably, federal highway guidelines say “urban interstate spurs that terminate in downtown areas might better meet local transportation and livability needs if they were downgraded to urban boulevards.”
And the guidelines add, “In one case, an interstate segment that was to connect to a future interstate route became impractical due to community opposition and environmental concerns, and so the segment would never function as part of the interstate system.”
Singer says that example is from Washington, D.C. But it could have applied to multiple current and former freeway segments in Milwaukee if any had been designated as interstates before construction was halted in the 1970s: Downtown’s Park East Freeway (demolished in 2003); the west side’s Stadium North Freeway (State Highway 175, now under study for replacement with a boulevard); the Menomonee Valley’s Stadium South Freeway (replaced in 1998 by what is now Brewers Boulevard); and the northwest side’s Fond du Lac Freeway (State Highway 145).
That collection of unfinished freeways is testament to what local historian John Gurda calls “the vitriol and the real drama” surrounding the system’s construction.
A postwar boom in automobile ownership and suburban growth created huge traffic jams, leading then-Mayor Frank Zeidler and aldermen to authorize building freeways in the early 1950s, starting with the Stadium South.
As it became clear the freeways would reach into the suburbs, the city handed the job off to Milwaukee County. By 1965, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission had mapped out plans for 112 miles of freeways throughout the seven-county area.
But 1965 also marked the birth of organized opposition to freeways. That was when residents launched protests against plans for the Lake Freeway, which would have met the Park East at an interchange in what is now Veterans Park, zooming past the War Memorial Center to connect with the Hoan and continue through Bay View and the southern suburbs to the Illinois border.
Protests and court battles continued into the 1970s, eventually blocking completion of the Lake, Park East, Stadium South, Stadium North and Fond du Lac Freeways, as well as several others that had been planned but never built, including the Park West on the west side.
However, much of the land for those freeways already had been cleared, taking out numerous homes and leaving wide stretches of open space in the Park East and Park West corridors. West Milwaukee lost most of its residential tax base to never-built portions of the Stadium South. Meanwhile, completion of I-43 had demolished the Black community’s thriving Bronzeville neighborhood and I-794 construction had devastated the Third Ward’s Italian community.
While many still saw freeways as beneficial, “the harm was in the central city, and the benefits generally inured to people in the suburbs,” says University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Emeritus Mordecai Lee, who fought freeway construction as a Democratic congressional aide and state legislator.
By the time the Airport Spur was completed in 1978, only 56% of the originally planned freeway system had been built. The County Expressway Commission was disbanded in 1980, transferring its remaining duties to WisDOT.
Yet freeway controversies were far from over. Highways built in the 1950s and 1960s were wearing out by the 1990s, leading to new debates over whether reconstruction should include expansion.
Fearing federal environmental rules and public opposition would block new regular lanes, then-Gov. Tommy Thompson’s administration considered a bus-only highway alongside I-94. Congress appropriated $289 million for an east-west transit project, but cut that sum to $241 million after neighborhood opposition killed the busway idea. That led to a study of adding bus- and carpool lanes to I-94 between Downtown and Waukesha, building a light rail system or expanding bus service.
But framing the issue that way sparked confrontations between freeway supporters and transit advocates over which transportation mode deserved most or all of the funding. It also highlighted the divide between largely white car-owning suburban commuters and the city’s many transit-dependent residents of color.
Then-Mayor John Norquist led support for light rail and opposition to freeway expansion, while Downtown retailer George Watts emerged as a leading light rail foe and freeway cheerleader. Black leaders accused Watts of playing to racial fears when he declared that light rail “brings in strangers who are not only a threat to your property, but to your children,” although he denied his comments were racist.
A $1.86 billion something-for-everyone plan would have funded bus- and carpool lanes, light rail and express buses. It died in 1997, when Thompson’s fellow Republicans in the Legislature pressured him into vowing not to spend “one nickel of state tax money” on light rail, and Democrats retaliated by blocking cash for new lanes.
Meanwhile, Norquist was pushing to replace east-west I-794 with a boulevard, but running into heavy opposition from WisDOT and south suburban officials. However, the state was a bit more open to similar discussions about the less-traveled Park East.
Finally, in 1999, Thompson, Norquist and then-County Executive Tom Ament agreed to divide the $241 million in federal aid between rebuilding the Marquette Interchange, demolishing the Park East, rebuilding the 6th Street Viaduct, building a walkway at what would become Lakeshore State Park and creating a downtown transit system that would become The Hop.
That was controversial, too. Scott Walker, then a GOP state legislator, said he would rather sacrifice everything else in the deal than provide any funding for light rail.Watts claimed that razing the Park East “will be absolutely devastating, economically, to Downtown.”
With the rest of the area’s freeway system still needing reconstruction, the planning commission formed a blue-ribbon committee to study the issue. The study climaxed dramatically in 2003, when Walker – then Milwaukee County executive – joined Waukesha County Executive Dan Finley and the panel’s other suburban and business members to recommend widening most area freeways from six to eight lanes, outvoting Norquist, Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway, other city officials and representatives of then-Gov. Jim Doyle.
Budgetary issues and suburban rivalries eventually slowed much of the work, while west side residents – allied with Norquist’s successor, Tom Barrett – launched protests against expanding east-west I-94 that continue to this day. And just as razing the Park East was part of a compromise on Marquette Interchange reconstruction, replacing the Stadium North with a boulevard could be part of a Stadium Interchange rebuilding plan.
Barrett was not as vocal as Norquist when Doyle’s administration considered tearing down both the Hoan and east-west I-794 instead of rebuilding them. South suburban forces again rallied to save the bridge and the downtown freeway. After defeating Barrett in 2010 to replace Democrat Doyle, Walker authorized the 2013-2016 reconstruction project.
Compared to those earlier battles, today’s “opposition to tearing down (east-west I-794) is much more muted, much more behind the scenes,” says UWM’s Lee.
One major reason for the difference is that the late Watts’ dire predictions about razing the Park East proved spectacularly wrong, say Lee and Rob Henken, president of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Lee pointed to the rise of Fiserv Forum and the Deer District in and near the former freeway corridor. Even before that, “Downtown has boomed in other ways, and traffic did not come to a standstill,” Henken added.
Downtown Ald. Bob Bauman also sees a demographic shift. Downtown is increasingly home to younger residents “who reject the notion that you need freeways,” says Bauman, a longtime freeway opponent and transit backer. That grassroots support for transit and other auto alternatives contrasts with the 1990s, when freeway opponents were largely progressive activists and professional planners, he says.
None of that guarantees east-west I-794 will be taken down. Bauman initially threatened to delay action on the Downtown plan because he feared state and business opposition would render its freeway removal and streetcar expansion recommendations unrealistic, but he backed off after city officials promised support.
WisDOT could legitimately view I-794 as more important than the vestigial Park East, Henken says. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and WisDOT’s Thompson generally favor freeway expansion, Lee notes.
If WisDOT did seek to raze the freeway stretch, historian Gurda says, protests could erupt in Bay View and the southern suburbs. That could draw Republican lawmakers to intervene to keep the freeway, Bauman says. After Bauman was interviewed, Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) also raised that prospect.
Overall, Bauman says, I-794 removal is still “a long shot, but it’s a real shot” this time.
