Milwaukee, a great city that unfortunately for me carries only the association of the fictional Schotz Brewery, has been undergoing a major redevelopment effort. But according to this article in the Journal-Sentinal, their efforts have been almost exclusively focused on real estate development with no effort on job creation. A full report from the nonprofit Public Policy Forum provides a great illustration of the nuts and bolts analyis process interested groups can take to critique a city’s direction. Their conclusion: there is no plan.
It’s not clear what specifically they should be doing vis a vis workforce development. Should they hire localy-based Next Generation Consulting and ask Rebecca Ryan how to attract modern day Laverne and Shirleys to be web developers at Harley-Davidson? Is it worthwhile for a city that is so fundamentally a rust-belt, heavy industry capitol to endeavor to re-brand itself as a creativity magnet? My barometer is to go to the Milwaukee Craig’s List page and see if there’s much of anything that might attract someone like me. Not yet. But they DO have a page at least. And being a web developer at Harley-Davidson sounds a lot cooler than working a gas mine in Wyoming.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Well I’m not sure how much you know about Milwaukee but as someone in the “Creative Class” I find Milwaukee to be an amazing city to live in. Recently Maxim Magazine ranked Milwaukee the #2 party city in America (we have more bars per capita than any comparible city in the world), we are home to the spectacular Calatrava designed Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee sits right on Lake Michigan so we have miles of park land along the lake, how could I forget but we hold the world’s largest music festival every year.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever been but Milwaukee is a great city to live in and despite the recent public policy report (which says many true things) things are still looking up here.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I admit, I know nothing firsthand; I was hoping to inspire some feedback to learn more.
Well we clearly have our problems here in Milwaukee. The north side is very poor and violence is pretty high up there, and clearly something must be done.
But the rest of the city is really going through an amazing rebirth. An area just south of downtown called the Third Ward which not too long ago was all vacant warehouses and a few porn stores is now hip and trendy (a travel site recently called it the SOHO of the Midwest) with hundreds of new/conversions into condos, art & antique stores, various high end restaurants and bars, as well as the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.
Additionally the city has been slowly piecing together a Riverwalk that is close to running the length of the downtown. Basically as development occurs on the river they enter a private/public partnership to connect their portion of the Riverwalk to the existing system. Currently the walk itself still lacks full utilization so only in small segments is it very vibrant but more and more places are opening on the river every year (4 that I can think of just this summer).
The “Eastside” of Milwaukee has the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee which brings vibrancy to that entire part of the city but specifically to two unique districts, Brady St and North Ave.
The Milwaukee Metro is actually home to more Fortune 500 companies than just about any comparable cities in the US, we have eight. This last year Manpower agreed to move their headquarters to just across the river from downtown which should fuel development into an area needing redevelopment. Though close enough to another neighborhood “The Beerline” for employees to walk to and from work. “The Beerline” itself just recently really went through its rebirth as for years it was just empty land along the river.
I could go on and on (actually I often do). Now I agree with the public policy report that says we need an actual vision and direction to attract high-skilled jobs, there’s no doubt about that. Case in point is that GE Medical a couple of years back ended up building its headquarters in a near suburb as the city was unprepared to do what it would take to get GE Medical downtown. Further we have this odd problem of companies needing employees and a high unemployment rate (north side) but we’re unable to move those people into the jobs they need.
But as far as a unique city Milwaukee is truly a special town, and in many regards getting better everyday.