Connections: Condo Developments Along River Adding

First came the condos; now come the green spaces, paths and bridges.

On the heels of a housing boom along N. Commerce St., new parkland is in the works there, including an expansion of nearby Kilbourn Park and the creation of a grassy roof for a boathouse on the Milwaukee River. Next: a footbridge between Commerce and Brady streets.

"It's all in the tradition of the connections that (Frederick Law) Olmsted had in mind," Mayor John O. Norquist said of the growing links among neighborhoods on both sides of the river.

The connectors will join the Beerline redevelopment area along Commerce St., site of more than $120 million worth of new condos and apartments, with nearby Brewers Hill and the Brady St. neighborhood.

Commerce St. already has its own RiverWalk and a grand staircase cascading down the bluff at Vine St. In September, grading and landscape work will begin to extend city-owned Kilbourn Park, on the top of a bluff at Garfield and North avenues, down to Commerce St. Next year, a footpath will zig-zag down the hill. As a bookend to the staircase at Vine St., a second set of stairs may be built from Booth to Commerce streets, said city Planning Director Peter Park.

On the river at the corner of Commerce and Pierce streets, a more unusual chunk of green space is about to take root: a grassy, tree-lined roof over a new boathouse for the Milwaukee Rowing Club.

With the help of a $35,000 grant from the national City Parks Forum, the city will begin building the boathouse this fall and will lease it to the rowing club. The 175-person club, with about half of its members from Marquette University, has become more active in teaching rowing skills to school kids, including the Children's Outing Association on the edge of Garfield Park.

The new partnership "is a great way to join our needs with those of the area around us," said Ken Nelson, president of the rowing club, which is temporarily based in an old truck terminal at the former Pfister & Vogel Tannery on the Water St. side of the river. "With all of the waterfront cafes in the works, we can provide a bit of entertainment for people on the river. It's a lot better than just watching a bunch of driftwood float by."

Nelson and Norquist said ties between the city and the rowing club began two years ago at a parks conference in Pittsburgh. "Just about every high school there has a rowing club," the mayor said. "It's a way for poor kids to get scholarships to prestige colleges." The same sort of thing could happen in Milwaukee, he said.

In addition to the grant from the parks group, the $3.4 million in funding for the boathouse and park improvements came from a tax incremental financing district, in which new property taxes generated by redevelopment help pay for infrastructure.

Another offshoot of the renewal is a "marsupial" footbridge that will be slung underneath the Holton St. viaduct between Commerce and Brady streets. Design and engineering work for that project is already under way, according to Mike Wisniewski, senior economic development specialist with the Department of City Development. The mostly federally funded bridge, along with artful lighting and a rock garden and plazas, should be completed by the end of next year, he said.

Commerce St.'s rebirth began with a master plan devised in 1997 by San Francisco architect Dan Solomon and fleshed out by Park, the city planner. It's based on old-fashioned planning principles: densely spaced housing interspersed with parks and pedestrian paths along a readable street grid.

John Ellis, one of Solomon's partners, expressed amazement at how quickly the Beerline has blossomed. He praised the city for removing roadblocks to development. He contrasted the burst of activity here with a similar waterfront development in San Francisco, which "is still creeping along like a glacier" after 25 years of planning and political infighting.

Norquist said the Beerline's emphasis on compact, walkable, mixed-use development - an approach called New Urbanism - will be used for rebuilding the land underneath the vanishing Park East freeway spur.

"This idea can be replicated virtually anywhere," the mayor said. "What creates valuable real estate is a sensible, sophisticated, easy-to-follow plan."

By WHITNEY GOULD
of the Journal Sentinel staff

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on July 27, 2002.