UW-Tosa Won’t be Easy
Everyone in the Milwaukee region should support higher education and understand the value that research institutions play in creating jobs and growing the economy. Likewise, it is understood that it is in the best interest of the entire region to have new jobs and investment today, rather than tomorrow.
UW-Milwaukee’s plan to build an engineering and research campus on the County Grounds in Wauwatosa will certainly be a benefit to the region’s economy. However, there are many obstacles that will delay the campus from becoming a reality, and as a result, will delay the economic benefits to the region. Here are just a few of those obstacles (while none of these are necessarily deal-killers, they will certainly cause significant and costly delays):
Opposition to Building on County Grounds. For years, there has been opposition to developing the County Grounds from various groups. The areas that have already been developed were much more commercial in nature. However, the remaining piece being proposed for UWM, between Swan Boulevard and Watertown Plank, is currently open green space. Several environmental groups will oppose construction on the remaining open land.
- Opposition to University Expansion in Wauwatosa. Wisconsin Lutheran College, located just on the other side of the Medical Complex from the UWM site has been in a constant struggle with neighbors to expand their campus. Residents have opposed expansion for several reasons, including (like on the East Side of Milwaukee) a disinterest in additional students housing in their neighborhood.
- Site Issues. There have been recent reports about the pauper cemeteries on the County Grounds, many of the remains coming from the tuberculosis hospital that was once there. It is very likely that additional remains are buried on the UWM site. In addition, the site is in the pathway of butterfly migration.
- Infrastructure and Access. The UWM Site at the County Grounds will need substantial infrastructure put in place before any building construction can begin, which will be costly and will delay construction. Basic infrastructure, such as roads, sewer, water and electric will need to be installed for the entire campus. Since the site is currently pervious , storm water runoff management will require a significant amount of land and additional expense. Finally, the Zoo Interchange is expected to be under reconstruction from 2012-16. That project extends past North Avenue. As a result, access to the UWM site will be impaired during construction and possibly even once the complex is completed. (http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/projects/sefreeways/zooindex.htm)
In contrast, Downtown Milwaukee has many vacant lots that are ready to be built on as quickly as UWM wants. There will be little to no neighbor opposition and the infrastructure is already in place. In addition to various transit options downtown, the Marquette Interchange will be completed by the beginning of 2009. All of this means that UWM will be able to get in the ground earlier, thus providing our region with needed jobs and investment sooner. Instead of spending scarce university, state and philanthropic dollars on infrastructure in Wauwatosa, those same funds could be put towards classroom buildings, computer labs, research labs, chair endowments and curriculum.
The choice is clear: Putting UWM downtown will provide the greatest benefit to the Milwaukee region because it is cost-effective and it can break ground quickly.
Tags: 4th district, 53202, city, development, engineering, milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, urban, uwm
2 Responses to “UW-Tosa Won’t be Easy”
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March 26th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Stay downtown. What we in Wauwatosa don’t need is a bunch of drunken kids talking on their cellphones weaving down Mayfair Road. Plaeas stay away.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Hey, great to see this effort.
I’ve had a couple of letters printed about this:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=705436
http://www.riverwestcurrents.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=68
Please link them on your site if they are helpful.
Also, here is a first-time-around longer version with attitude, sent around to various factors, revised for above letters, and much revised to the Chancellor:
When it comes to the effort to build a new UW-Milwaukee engineering campus in Wauwatosa, let’s just adopt the usual Milwaukee-area civic design behavior – the done-deal, too-much-momentum, decision’s-already-been-made approach. That’s familiar enough.
Accept it. It’s been going on since the 1850s. When the railroads were built, the focus on sometimes-stormy water transportation declined. Ports moved toward being gentrified waterfront backwaters with remnant commercial shipping. Meanwhile, wheeled vehicles continually multiply to dominate the landscape. And as long as such vehicles allowed people to get around so easily, and with the modernization of highways, people moved out to the open lands in the country, steadily moving the center of population and commerce and traffic away from the Lake.
It’s right there in the first sentence – Milwaukee to Wauwatosa. And there’s some consistency even with what happened with buildings on Lake Michigan, like Pier Wisconsin, down-branding Milwaukee and Lake Michigan, diminishing their values in favor of a river several watersheds away in the center of the State with the same name.
De-branding Milwaukee was done before, putting Midwest Airlines and Bradley corporate brands on the replacements and upgrades for the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center, and Arena. Now, longstanding Milwaukee events, such as the International Folk Fair, are in West Allis.
Yep, with the move of UWM’s Engineering Campus away from Milwaukee’s Lake Michigan bluffs, things may settle down around the East Side campus and residential neighborhood, what with fewer people spending and paying taxes that help the city. Those tops-for-Milwaukee high-end residences around UWM will have a quieter market, as compared with Brookfield and parts of Wauwatosa, where relocating Engineering Campus faculty and staff will be driving up the market for choice lots and residences. And all those downtown condos within a short hike or bike ride up the Milwaukee River valley to UWM won’t be quite so in demand, so property valuations will, in some relative way, fall. With a few thousand technically oriented minds, pursuing high-end deals, with no need to come into the dangerous and old neighborhood, the UWM campus may revert to a more quaint liberal-arts college type of school, along the lines of old Downer College/Normal School, or a Community College instead of a University. The oft-remarked separation between the UWM’s old-campus liberal arts east of Maryland Avenue, and the new-campus tech sciences west of Maryland, will no longer be just across a street. It will be through several miles of traffic to the west. Consideration then might be made for using the newly-freed space for a charter-school type academy, like in the University School days before the Engineering and Sciences campus, so as to bring the spectrum of educational environments to the East Side campus.
With the tech-focused people, seen as champions leading the way to a better economy, way out west in Wauwatosa, in a spanking new facility catering even more effectively and conveniently to the massing of corporate patrons and clients planting their office/industrial park buildings and trophy palaces in farm/green fields thereabouts – and further out west in Waukesha (Oh, yes . . . UW-Waukesha is being pushed to combine with UWM because UWM is a doctorate-degree granting institution, as opposed to UW-Waukesha, which would have to work mightily to raise money and standards, then get the State Legislature to recognize and fund it as a doctoral-degree granting institution – and Wauwatosa is close to a middle-ground, compromise venue). That will bring in money to the Wauwatosa location, and, well, the Chancellor’s headquarters, where he would be making these deals for the region’s progress, would be away, through several miles of traffic to the east, so, the Chancellor should have a new-campus office suite, and, to avoid duplication . . .
Well, no worry – the UW System already has a UW-W, down there in Whitewater. But then, those important engineering students will need a gym and dorms, and maybe a humanities/human relations curriculum (for a well-rounded education for this ever-demanding and ever-urbanizing world) in a wing close by to keep down the time lost to travel. Does the UW System have a UW-T, for ‘Tech’ or ‘Tosa’? Or a UW-TT? That brand resonates with techies! But does it have enough acreage? How about expanding to the northeast, so as to be closer to Hansen Golf Course? That’s synergy!
And what of the left-behind engineering and science buildings at the newly made ‘Post-New-Campus’? Many date from the 1960s, before we got smarter about contaminants and improving design. Any money being raised to tend to that ‘opportunity’, or will the buildings be there a while, less and less popular as classrooms, maybe taking some residents, awaiting heightening concerns to raise money for replacements?
On the other hand, let’s look at it as familiar – a site with ‘brownfield/obsolescence’ problems in the old city stranded by a move out to the clean fields on the outskirts. That, along with the soon-to-be-available Columbia Hospital facility, are just the kind of challenging left-overs an urban university and/or old-line, second-tier city are used to being stuck with – old liabilities with little interest by the region’s economic elites in fixing them when such money could, instead, be invested more profitably in the, less problematic, ‘new lands’.
Meanwhile, out at Wauwatosa’s Research Center neighborhood, the New Engineering Campus (hey, ‘NEC’, how’s that for a brand?) has been drawn out already by Wauwatosa-located Zimmerman Architectural Studios, as seen online (search ‘UWM Engineering Campus drawing’). The plan rubs parking lots, green spaces and surface-runoff detention ponds with those of corporate champions, which will see caravans of vehicles traversing along paved private drives curving betwixt the classical lines of an every-other office park, physically networking (while burning fuel) for all our betterment – a sort of criss-crossing pilgrimage for progress, albeit not as easy as walking on the East Side.
Anyway, the Wauwatosa Eschweiler site – with its haunted and historic and obsolete buildings – is out there toward the center of population and it’s getting pretty crowded on the freeways, so much so that the Zoo Exchange is due to be rebuilt sometime soon. So, restricted access off- and on-ramp capacity is considered in the Zimmerman plan for the academic enclave, to avoid those troublesome jam-ups, instead of coming back later for a much more expensive add-on rebuild, though upgrading may be needed as site use soars.
Then, better think about traffic jams on Watertown Plank Road, too. It would be an occasional rush-hour barrier between ‘NEC’ and the Research Park west of the freeway. Why not plan a private/dedicated elevated drive arching across the freeway from the campus to the Research Park to provide the kind of privileged access that will help get progress done? Name it the ‘Some-such-or-other Corporate Brand’ Bridge to Progress. I bet the road contractors would be more than willing to pledge, up front, some matching funds for that. After all, it’s not public elevated rail transit that could whisk students (and citizens) above the traffic between the region’s universities, colleges and urban/business nodes, with much less or no street traffic disruption during construction if rollercoaster technology is used, for example.
And one day, when a company needs a site in the Research Park area, or an existing company or the Medical Center needs to expand, they can go somewhere else out into the open country to the west, because ‘NEC’ is on the site.
Fine. Many people in Milwaukee have always known there were limits to growth. Every little parcel in the city can’t be built on and have the city expect to be attractive and comfortable. People have long moved to where there is more open space, like suburbs and ring cities. Now maybe the old city will have more of that prized ‘open space’. Just hope sites like the A.O. Smith site, 35th Street Industrial Corridor, the ‘Post-New Campus’, and so many other sites, will soon get a big open parking lot for a New Walgreens SuperCenter or MegaWalMart, so neighborhood shoppers won’t have to pay outrageous prices like on the East Side, hey, or even Wauwatosa.
After all, building on 6 crowded city blocks and a nearby 4 others that are available on the ‘Post-New Campus’ and Columbia Hospital sites, would be way too expensive and complicated, what with management challenges for a university with a School of Architecture and Urban Planning, like demolition/deconstruction, temporary classrooms and structures, construction traffic, etc. – even if it were for a unique cutting-edge multi-platform high rise with a goal of making the platform complex net energy producing using solar thermal/photovoltaic and using that nearby famous lake-effect wind for fuel-free power. The world is not quite ready for a taller building complex that produces its own power and sells a surplus, especially in a world of dense urban high-rise districts perfectly content to continue as power sinks. And such a building helping power an elevated fixed rail system connecting fixed institutions around town (maybe with a short ‘test’ spur to get construction traffic in and out of the site from a marshalling yard at the north end of Humboldt Avenue)? Well, as before, Milwaukee’s shown time and again it’s not ready to lead the world in newer ways of doing that.
In the online UWM ‘Master Plan – Planning Materials’, UWM Chancellor indicates in his ‘Intellectual Space’ report from Jan, 2007, that UWM has 302 students per acre, and compares that with UW-Madison (44). The Chancellor cites UWM as 93 acres. Let’s grant about 85 that is build-able acres on the East Side contiguous, (20 acres for Downer Woods subtracted and Columbia Hospital Campus added). The Chancellor also cites Georgia State University at 371 students per acre. Closer examination of other outfits in the same business that UWM Engineering competes with, show MIT with 168 acres and about 10,250 enrolled in a spectrum of fields similar to UWM’s, right between urban Cambridge and Boston. Sure, about half the student count of UWM’s 29,000 or so, but a lot gets done at the world’s top tech institution on less than twice UWM’s acreage. A history of California Institute of Technology lists 22 acres for the starting site and around 2000 undergrad and grad now – how big is the CEAS block? Northwestern University’s Chicago Campus is listed as 25 acres with around 4200 enrolled. Illinois Institute of Technology, 120 acres. In town, Marquette lists 90 acres, Milwaukee School of Engineering, 15 acres.
How many enrolled at UWM’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the graduate level? Their site says 1900. Doesn’t seem completely out-of-line with all those old-line high-end private tech schools, many in urban settings.
The UWM College of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ site also talks about UWM being the ‘best of all worlds: a fun, active campus atmosphere . . . ; a friendly neighborhood within a large city.’ Where’s that in Wauwatosa?
Even with an East Side University, UWM would continue to remotely operate and locate limited discrete off-site facilities, maybe in the city and maybe not as far away as Wauwatosa. But for imprinting core UWM functions and experiences, all UWM students and grads should spend large portions of their time at the headquarters Campus in the City of Milwaukee by Lake Michigan.
Oops, sorry – off message.
Oh well, the planning paradigms have been clearly laid – in this case, as the Chancellor indicated, centrifugal beats centripetal. Wisconsin only has one class-A city. Why feature it? Go along with the rest of the State – stick it to Milwaukee and stick Milwaukee’s assets in some other lesser burg. Those couple of thousand engineering students and researchers won’t miss the hubbub of the city as commuter students out by the freeway in safer, less complicated, golf-course endowed, Wauwatosa. What better example of the ways of the world?
Momentum is a high hurdle. Some East Side property owners have long aired the neighborhood’s genteel suburban roots when it comes to big crowds in the neighborhood. Businesses recognize the opportunities, though, and are building up in quality and choices in the limited commercial districts walk-ably nearby. And the Chancellor’s statements about just being able to build replacement structures on the CEAS campus might be more flexible with an outstanding design, especially if it provided clean fuel-free energy for the neighborhood, maybe by utilizing a patent I recently saw that shows buildings’ foundations allowing hydraulic suspension as a way to store energy. Is this design process really seeking the best solution through, say, a competition as was done for the Milwaukee Art Museum addition, or is the solution being contracted to outside private consultants with a wash of public participation committees?
Oops, again. But it kinda hurts that Milwaukee’s decision-making crowd is aiming in familiar and consistent directions that are safe and more simple, well-accepted by general audiences, directions that suit those who accept Milwaukee’s second-tier overly-modest status as a city. And then, somehow, suburban residents and out-of-town consultants/designers start calling the shots.
Even if the Wauwatosa land is purchased, and titled to UWM (let’s hope), and then the economy got screwed up and the State Legislature backed down from funding the ‘NEC’, the land could be sold at some later date to the highest bidder. Just look at what the recent donors to UW-Madison’s Business school stipulated with their 85 million dollar gift – no naming until 2027, when estimates of naming-rights value were cited by Business Week as being around $225 million. Sit on it and profit! Everything’s good!
And just an almost final thing – at least some have suggested bolstering Milwaukee’s brand by renaming UWM, ‘Milwaukee State University’. Too bad there’s an ‘MSU’ so close across the Lake at East Lansing. ‘State University at Milwaukee’ would yield the acronym, ‘SUM’. Better? Want choice? Break from the UW-System and become the University of the City of Milwaukee – UCM or UOCOM.
(No offense, but I hope the lead patron and his followers will take the time to find a way to insist that the New Engineering Campus signature spaces, unlike Discovery World’s Pilot House, are designed without obstructing pillars, and that the New Engineering Campus design forms will show more imagination than a shoebox and a hatbox. That’s also too familiar.)
So, thanks very much for what gives rise to a private funding revolution, as reported Nov 16 in the Journal/Sentinel, that will bring us a New Engineering Campus in Wauwatosa. And, like almost any big public design, thanks for the consequences and lost opportunities.