10 people who are CHANGING MILWAUKEE

In this special report, BizTimes Milwaukee brings you the profiles of 10 people who are changing Milwaukee.

These folks are transforming the community in a variety of ways. They are driving change. They are making a difference.

No doubt, there are countless others who also are making Milwaukee a better place to live, work and play. We will continue to tell their stories in upcoming issues of BizTimes Milwaukee.

The urban farmer

Will Allen, president and chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based urban farm Growing Power Inc. has played a major role in starting America’s good food revolution.

Growing Power has 15 regional farms, including the Milwaukee farm at 5500 W. Silver Spring Dr.

The organization has also trained more than 1,000 farmers across the country in sustainable food systems and urban agriculture.

“Milwaukee is considered to be the leader in the world in terms of urban farming,” Allen said. “But we can’t do it alone. The good food revolution is going to take more collaboration and more farmers.”

Allen believes strongly in the power of healthy home grown food to bring together communities and be the staple of America’s future.

“The one thing we all have in common is that we need to eat food to survive,” Allen said. “We’ve been doing this for 18 years, and it has always been about working as a team, collaborating, setting goals, fulfilling them and bringing people together in a healthy way around food.”

Allen and Growing Power has gotten the attention of several national media outlets and the White House. The Obama administration is promoting healthy living in its fight against childhood obesity. Allen has been invited to the White House on numerous occasions to talk with First Lady Michelle Obama about sustainable food sources.

“I believe this is the future of agriculture,” Allen said. “What we are doing at growing power, what we are teaching visitors to our farm is really the future of food systems everywhere in the world. Growing Power’s collaborative partnerships and sustainable food sources have brought the community together in a way that has put Milwaukee on the map, but we can’t produce enough good food for everybody in the country.”

Growing Power has partnered with a number of different organizations from the local area to help spread the word about healthy home grown food, Allen said.

“Not only are we looking to develop more community based systems while also providing food and education to underserved communities in the area we are also looking to the medical community to share the nutritional things we need to know about our food,” he said.

Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee has partnered with Growing Power to offer a farmer’s market to employees and patients once a week, he said.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Allen said. “We have connected with Aurora on the nutritional side and doctors and hospital staff can emphasis the preventative care approach by practicing what they preach and eating healthy foods.”

According to Allen, the farm has also ramped up its renewable energy uses to cut costs.

“Renewable energy is a big piece of the puzzle,” Allen said. “The cost of operating a facility is hugely important in developing a sustainable system.”

Growing Power is working with local companies to install a photovoltaic system as well as solar water heaters.

By September, the organization hopes to have a system in place that will account for 70 percent of its hot water needs, Allen said.

Allen has also designed a rain water catching system that turns the water coming off the green houses at the farm into water used in the farm’s fish system to breed lake perch.

“We designed a system that holds 12,000 fish and also circulates water back inside the green house to another system,” Allen said. “Because the water is constantly moving it will never freeze, and because it mimics the changing temperatures of Lake Michigan. It’s perfect for breeding lake perch.”

Allen is working with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewage District and the UW-Milwaukee Great Lakes Institute on the project.

“This project demonstrates how you can save and re-use water for a productive use,” Allen said.

Collaborations are the most important part in expanding the good food revolution, Allen said.

“We all need to come together for this to really take off,” Allen said. “Realistically, we can continue to help plant community gardens, and selling produce to local restaurants and at farmers markets but for us to really grow this into the nation’s new sustainable industry we need everyone on board. Cities are important, planners are important and people in the communities across the country must be engaged. Wisconsin has always been considered a progressive state when it comes to urban agriculture. It’s the community support that has gotten us there and it’s the community support that will continue to grow this revolution.”

Meeusen leads water hub effort

The world is running out of fresh water.

According to the report “Charting Our Water Future” by the 2030 Water Resources Group, a consortium of private companies from around the globe, there is 4.3 trillion cubic meters of water available on the planet. Current human populations are using about 4.5 trillion cubic meters, the report says, by drawing down aquifers and other natural stores.

By 2030, the growing population will need 6.9 trillion cubic meters of water.

The world’s problems with water will be myriad – how to clean, transport, measure, heat and cool, and even desalinate it. And while Milwaukee might not be an obvious first choice to locate a global hub of water businesses and research, it already is one.

Rich Meeusen, president, chairman and chief executive officer of Brown Deer-based Badger Meter Inc., has taken a leading role to promote the Milwaukee area as a water technology hub. He is the co-chair of the Milwaukee Water Council, a division of the Milwaukee 7 that was formed to promote Milwaukee as a hub of water industry, research and knowledge.

Meeusen willingly preaches the Milwaukee water gospel almost wherever he goes.

“Milwaukee is a city that was built on wet industries,” he said. “In the 1800s we were the brewery capital of the U.S., we were the tannery capital of the U.S, and we had all of these wet (industry) companies,” Meeusen said. “Our forefathers in this city knew exactly what this city was all about – it was about water.”

Today, there are more than 120 water-related companies in the Milwaukee area, including five of the 11 largest water technology companies in the world that have a significant presence here, including companies such as A.O. Smith, Kohler, Siemens, ITT Water and Wastewater-Sanitaire, Pentair, Veolia, Badger Meter and more.

Those companies and the handful of universities in metro Milwaukee have given the metro area a unique position that Meeusen and the Milwaukee Water Council are working to capitalize on. With a copy of the 2030 Water Resources Group report in hand, Meeusen paints a crystal clear picture of the opportunity that Milwaukee has before it.

“In the back of this report, they list every technology that they believe could close this (freshwater supply) gap,” he said. “What excites me about it is I can write down the name of a Milwaukee company that is working on every one of these technologies.”

The Milwaukee Water Council was formed in 2006, after Meeusen met with Paul Jones, CEO and chairman of A.O. Smith., and toured the company’s flow lab. After leaving the appointment, Meeusen began thinking about the number of water-related companies in the Milwaukee area.

The group began taking shape after Meeusen mentioned it to Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

“People say we’re trying to build a water hub – there was no water hub to build. It was already here,” Meeusen said. “Our vision was to bring those companies together and also to bring together academia, business and everything else that would allow us to grow it even bigger.”

Meeusen’s hope is that Milwaukee becomes to water what Silicon Valley is to software and technology development – that entrepreneurs and existing companies will be attracted to the companies, labor force, universities, government and venture capital that understand and are interested in water-related businesses.

Over the four years that it has been in existence, the Milwaukee Water Council has made significant progress on four of those five points, Meeusen said, which played a critical role in attracting American Micro Detection Systems Inc. to the city. When it opens, American Micro Detection Systems will have 10 employees. It anticipates several hundred employees after several years.

“They came to Milwaukee and said, ‘We’re thinking of moving our water technology company somewhere.'” he said. “We were immediately able to introduce them to the CEOs of all the major water technology companies in the area. We were able to show them that we have a workforce that understands water technology.”

Although American Micro Detection Systems is the first company that the Milwaukee Water Council has attracted to the region, several member companies have announced expansions, including Sanitaire, A.O. Smith and Badger Meter.

“You add that up and it might be 50 to 100 jobs,” Meeusen said. “But it’s jobs we didn’t have a year ago. I’ll take a lot of those little wins. I can win a ballgame hitting singles.”

Last year the United Nations named Milwaukee as one of the 14 U.N. Global Compact Cities, cities that are designated as having excellence in a given subject. Milwaukee, only the second U.S. city named, was named for its excellence in water.

“What it meant was that the U.N. looked at Milwaukee and said these guys have more knowledge about water and are doing more with water than anyone else in the world,” Meeusen said. “Outside Milwaukee, people really do recognize us as a water hub.”

Lubar helped spur redevelopment at Bradford Beach

Bradford Beach is one of the crown jewels in the Milwaukee County Parks system. It provides a retreat for the entire metro area during the hottest summer months.

But a few years ago, the beach had problems that kept the crowds away. Algae clogged the beach’s shallow waters, emitting a foul odor. Weeds grew in the sand. The beach house vendor station was closed for a number of years. And even if people still wanted to swim at the beach, there were no lifeguards.

Today, Bradford Beach is back. A private company operates its Beach House, including a beach bar, there are extensive volleyball courts and private chairs can be rented by the hour or day. The Bartolotta Restaurant Group operates the North End, a custard and hamburger stand on the south end of the beach. New gardens and plantings are helping to keep flooding from the beach and improve water quality. The beach is being cleaned daily by tractors and other heavy machinery.

And the lifeguards are back for the third year.

Sheldon Lubar, founder and chairman of Milwaukee-based Lubar & Co., deserves much of the credit for revitalizing Bradford Beach.

One of the city’s best known businessmen, Lubar paid for the lifeguards in 2008 and 2009 with a $65,000 donation each year.

It was not the first time Lubar has made a major contribution to the community. A strong supporter of education, he contributed $10 million to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Business, which was later re-named the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business. Lubar and his wife Marianne were contributors to the $85 million Wisconsin Naming Partnership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. In 2007 he donated $500,000 to Whitefish Bay High School for athletics facilities. He has also been an outspoken critic of Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee County government, calling for reform of both.

Growing up in Whitefish Bay, Lubar spent large parts of the summers of his youth at Bradford Beach.

He learned that Milwaukee County was not providing lifeguards at the beach in 2008 while attending a Greater Milwaukee Committee Quality of Life Committee meeting, where Sue Black, director of the Milwaukee County Parks System, was the speaker.

“She talked about Bradford Beach and the need to do something there and that the county had terminated paying for lifeguards a few years (prior),” he said. “I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ I grew up on the East Side and we would come down to the beach constantly. But it was cold and you need lifeguards if you’re going to have safety, especially for the younger kids.”

Lubar’s donation, which came at the beginning of the redevelopment of the beach, provided a spark that other individuals and companies rallied around, Black said, which has helped make the beach what it is today.

“Shel was a catalyst by bringing back the lifeguards, bringing back that presence,” she said. “With that presence, people thought that the beach was back, with the eyes and ears there and the safety. That brought back more programming. His donation spurred a bigger vision, with MillerCoors coming forward with the $500,000 donation (for algae control and other environmental cleanups). It wasn’t just what he did – he was a catalyst for the vision of the beach.”

Milwaukee County is paying for the lifeguards this year, Black said.

The donations, the private dollars invested and Milwaukee County’s renewed commitment to Bradford Beach have made an impressive difference in a short amount of time, he said.

“It really is a superb place, a wonderful place for all sorts of people,” Lubar said. “I think it’s absolutely wonderful.”

McMahon works to improve health of Milwaukee

Milwaukee’s reputation for beer, bratwurst and cheese doesn’t exactly conjure up images of healthy citizens – and 2006 figures from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services that show 27 percent of the state’s population being obese don’t help.

However, several recent developments show Milwaukeeans are taking a more active role in exercise, nutrition and wellness.

Gold’s Gym is building a new, $13 million five-level gym in downtown Milwaukee near the intersection of Water Street and Wisconsin Avenue, and several smaller gyms have opened throughout the city. Specialty athletic shoe and apparel stores, bicycle shops and athletic shops continue to open and thrive in the city. And independent grocery stores, public markets and farmers markets have increased in number in recent years.

“People are becoming more and more concerned with their health, more concerned with eating healthfully and taking charge of their lifestyle,” said Janet McMahon, senior strategy advisor of healthy lifestyles with YMCA of metro Milwaukee and executive director of Well City Milwaukee, a nonprofit organization formed to promote workplace wellness initiatives.

This April, Milwaukee was awarded a silver Well City designation by the Wellness Council of America. Milwaukee is the 10th Well City named in the country, and the largest city to win the designation, McMahon said.

The Well City designation was four years in the making, said Arvid “Dick” Tillmar, a long-time Milwaukee area health insurance industry executive and wellness advocate. The group’s goal is to promote wellness programs among employers in the metro area, which should make them more attractive to young workers.

“When you have a designation of being a healthy city and 60 to 70 percent of your workplaces are health friendly, then I think we’ve got a picture that says to young people ‘Maybe Milwaukee isn’t a bad place to live,'” Tillmar said.

To win the Well City designation, Well City Milwaukee enlisted 34 employers in the region to design and implement new wellness programs. Participating companies were in diverse industries such as financial services, manufacturing, education and nonprofits. The companies had as few as five employees, and as many as 13,000.

“If the workplace can develop a culture that supports wellness, that says, ‘We don’t smoke here, we don’t serve junk food at meetings and we’d love for you to take walks on your break.’ If we can create a culture that supports health and well-being with appropriate insurance plans, that’s how we transform a community,” McMahon said.

The Well City award is valid for five years. McMahon and other Well City Milwaukee officials are meeting throughout the summer to raise funds and prepare to expand participation in the program.

“We’re going to re-launch and recruit the same member employers back,” she said. “We feel pretty strongly that this is the stage to grow it even bigger and really blow it out of the water. We were able to accomplish our silver level designation through the hard work of our 34 employers, and that is not the majority of the business community in Milwaukee by any stretch.”

Well City Milwaukee hopes its members expand their workplace wellness programs to include family members as well, McMahon said, to encourage healthy lifestyles for entire families.

“If you can bring family members into the mix, you can sustain the healthy behavior and that can have a ripple effect on extended family and friends,” she said. “And hopefully other organizations can use some of our momentum at the workplace to run with it. One group can’t do it. There has to be a few catalysts in a few key areas and then a lot of support to keep those ripples going.”

The Well City Milwaukee program has also spurred new programs in Racine and the Fox Valley, and interest in Wausau and Madison. McMahon’s energy and enthusiasm helped spark that interest, and will be crucial in expanding the Well City program in Milwaukee, Tillmar said.

“She’s got a ton of energy, and knows that needs to get done,” he said.

On an aerotropolis mission

In late 2005, a group of business owners near and around Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport formed the Airport Gateway Business Association and the Airport Gateway Business Improvement Ditsrict, to improve what visitors see when they enter the metro area through the airport and the business environment near the airport.

Today, the BID and the association market the area as The Gateway to Milwaukee – capitalizing on not only the airport, but also the nearby highways and rail lines, and the area’s close proximity to the Port of Milwaukee.

“There are a couple of (main) goals – to enhance the area through beautification and security, and to market the area for business development,” said Tom Rave, executive director of the association.

To date, The Gateway to Milwaukee has done several different plantings in boulevards and open space in the area, assembled a list of properties available for lease or sale on its website and created an outreach program for companies interested in locating near the transportation hub. And it’s only getting started.

The Gateway was also created a new public-private entity named the Milwaukee Gateway Aerotropolis, an entity made up of representatives from municipalities and business organizations around the airport. An aerotropolis is a business development area clustered around an airport and related transportation areas.

“In the century that we’re in now, (the idea is that) a key economic hub should be around your airport because of globalization,” Rave said. “We realized if we were going to do this, it would take some cooperation among a variety of governments to make it successful.”

The Milwaukee Gateway Aerotropolis aims to further connect the airport, highway system and Port of Milwaukee, to cross-promote the transportation abilities of each system while maximizing the area’s appeal to new businesses.

“We’ve got a transportation hub within a fairly defined (area) – we don’t have to make a big physical infrastructure investment for this to happen,” Rave said. “This is a marketing problem.”

The Aerotropolis organization has been incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which will allow it to raise funds for economic development.

“Most 501(c)(3)s are charitable or educational, but this one will be focused on economic development,” Rave said. “The idea is that this will reduce the burdens of government, which is an idea that the IRS occasionally accepts for the formation of 501(c)(3)s. By having the governments participating in the organization, this organization will carry out some functions that none of these governments individually could do by themselves.”

The Airport Gateway Business Association will be a member of the Milwaukee Gateway Aerotropolis, and will provide administrative services to the group, Rave said. Along with government representatives, area business owners and executives will also be on the group’s board of directors.

“The idea of this whole concept is this has to be a business-driven exercise where we are bringing governments to behave together to create an environment which would be attractive to businesses to stay and come to,” Rave said.

“It ties back into the Milwaukee 7 concept,” Rave said. “Part of the work that the M7 has done has emphasized southeastern Wisconsin and Chicago continuing to grow together. Looking forward, we see that this area will be the northern transportation hub.

“How we can be efficient (in terms of transportation) is the real key for businesses that want to locate here.”

Invested in Milwaukee youth

Steve Glynn, executive director of Spreenkler Talent Labs in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood has garnered the same purpose of connecting Milwaukee’s youth with industry professionals since he founded Spreenkler Creative, a creative marketing development firm that hires students to do client work, giving the students valuable professional experience.

Glynn is now taking that purpose a step further by forming a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing industry training and education to at risk youth. The nonprofit organization is called Spreenkler Talent Labs, which is part of Spreenkler Creative.

Glynn recently hired Romke de Haan as the new president of Spreenkler Creative, which remains a for-profit company. De Haan has experience working for at risk children for a non-profit organization.

“The addition of Romke will allow us to effectively bring Spreenkler Talent Labs to life,” Glynn said. “His energy and his vision along with his experience … gives (him) a skill set that we would not have had here.”

De Haan was appointed president of Spreenkler Creative and Glynn took over as executive director of Spreenkler Talent Labs earlier this month.

Spreenkler Creative is dedicated to building a stronger talent pool of youth with real world work experience and then connecting them to industries that need their skill sets. Spreenkler currently trains and employs five college age students. The organization just lost two of its college age employees to full time job opportunities, Glynn said. The addition of Spreenkler Talent Labs will allow the organization to expand that age group to high school students as well.

Spreenkler Creative trains and hires students to design and produce real projects for Spreenkler clients.

Glynn said he has a core group of experienced professionals leading the effort and doing the training.

“Once they are trained it becomes a sort of youth apprenticeship,” de Haan said. “They are getting real time on the job training with real clients.”

The benefit is that the clients get a quality product in return for their money, but they are also helping grow the talent pool of the Milwaukee community, de Haan said.

“These students are getting real world work experience they can put on their resume, but they are also becoming more mature, and they’ve been given a focus,” de Haan said.

With the formation of Spreenkler Talent Labs, the Spreenkler team will be able to expand the training they offer, Glynn said.

Right now, training is done by the in-house team of Spreenkler professionals and involves web design, print design, marketing, video production and editing, technical website development and programming.

Glynn has already started to establish partnerships with local high school and charter schools and hopes to have 10 to 15 students in the Talent Labs program by fall. There will be specific projects the students will tackle in order to grow and develop their skills, he said.

“The idea is going to be to give these kids opportunities they didn’t know they had,” de Haan said. “We’re going to bring together people from all walks of life, let them mingle with our college students and let them know it is possible for them to have different career options. We have the opportunity to create diversity in a way that nobody really has before.”

Helios will be first solar panel manufacturer in Milwaukee

Milwaukee is known for manufacturing. Companies such as Harley-Davidson, A.O. Smith, Falk, Rockwell Automation and many breweries played large roles in the city’s development.

Manufacturing will drive the city’s future. However, what Milwaukee’s manufacturers produce is changing.

Helios USA LLC, a startup solar panel manufacturer that is developing a 40,000-square-foot plant in the city’s Menomonee Valley, is new to the city. So are its products.

But when the company begins shipping its solar panels throughout the U.S. in early 2011, it will become another of the city’s nationally known manufacturers, tapping into the city’s heritage of supplying the world with parts and components it needs.

“This is a manufacturing center – we put the plant here because of the strong heritage in energy,” said Steve Ostrenga, chief executive officer of Helios. “We’ve got ZBB and Johnson Controls and a lot of other firms that are in the (energy) industry already. And manufacturing is the backbone of this (community) already.”

Helios will hire production workers as early as September as it installs automated manufacturing and assembly equipment. The company hopes to begin full production by January and will have 20 to 40 employees at that time, Ostrenga said.

When it begins production, Helios will use about 15,000 square feet of the total space. The company anticipates several phases of expansion over the next several years. By the time it uses all of the 40,000 square feet of space for production, it will have about 100 employees.

Helios’ production system will be highly automated, using equipment that most workers in the area will not be familiar with, which is why the company will begin hiring this fall, Ostrenga said.

“We’re spending a lot of money on training because this process is unique,” he said. “The solar industry is new.”

However, the manufacturing process and equipment will be similar to the printing industry, which has historically had a large presence in metro Milwaukee.

“An ideal employee of ours is a pressman,” Ostrenga said. “A guy who runs a printing press will have a lot of the skills we need.”

Helios will produce its solar panels 24 hours per day, seven days per week, said John Kivlin, the company’s chief operating officer. The company will run four 12-hour shifts.

The company has already received several pre-production orders and is now talking with distributors and installers throughout the country.

By the time its Milwaukee plant is fully utilized, Helios will likely begin developing additional manufacturing facilities in the southeast, southwest and the ‘inner west coast’ of the U.S., Ostrenga said.

“Part of our plan is to replicate this model and build this kind of facility throughout the United States,” he said. “We’re in the process of developing that plan right now.”

What makes Helios so important to the Milwaukee region is that the company is starting here, said Dan Steininger vice president of BizStarts Milwaukee Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to fostering an entrepreneurial environment in the metro region.

“It’s difficult to recruit companies to the region. (Helios is) starting here and that’s what you have to capture,” he said.

Many of the volunteers involved in BizStarts are also involved with Strategic Entrepreneurial Investors (SEI), a network of independent angel investors. Several SEI members invested in Helios.

“As investors, we talked to potential customers and identified a market need among large users of solar panels,” Steininger said. “This is a growing industry and we wanted Milwaukee, one of the manufacturing capitals of the world, to be in that space. We know they’re going to have a stream of customers, and that’s why our investors were willing to take a risk.”

Krause leads program that fosters startups

Up until recently there really hasn’t been a dedicated resource in Milwaukee for early stage innovative businesses with potentially high growth ideas.

BizStarts Milwaukee was formed two years ago out of a task force established by the Greater Milwaukee Committee designed to study innovation. BizStarts is dedicated to assisting entrepreneurial startups in southeastern Wisconsin. The BizStarts Venture Track Program, a program formed a year and a half ago is making significant strides in fostering the region’s entrepreneurs and startup ventures.

“We are filling a niche,” said Chelsea Krause, executive director of the Venture Track program. “The program works with entrepreneurs with innovative ideas or products with high growth potential on a regional and statewide basis.”

The program is divided up into three tracks and is free to participating entrepreneurs, Krause said.

The three tracks, basic, classic and premium, are designed to help entrepreneurs in varying stages of the startup process, Krause said.

“What we found was that a lot of entrepreneurs aren’t sure where to begin or what to pay attention to first,” she said. “We evaluate where they are in the process and then help them move forward based on their progress and ideas.”

The basic track is for entrepreneurs at the very early stages of development. It focuses on whether or not they have a concept that’s feasible, that can actually grow.

“From there we help them design a business plan and have them go through an education program,” Krause said.

The classic stage entrepreneurs just want to be a part of what BizStarts and Venture Track are doing, Krause said.

“Peer networking is a large component of this stage, and if they need to be introduced to a connection I help them do that.”

Premium Venture Track entrepreneurs have a higher threshold of responsibility, Krause said. They are open to the mentoring process and can be advised on business decisions and investor relations. These entrepreneurs are matched up with mentors and coaches from the business world.

“The mentors for the program are serial entrepreneurs and the coaches are usually subject matter experts,” Krause said. “The coaches tend to be people like patent attorneys or reliability experts, people with expertise in a certain area.”

According to Krause, in its first year and a half, Venture Track had 51 entrepreneurial companies in the program.

Amy Reno and her husband Todd launched Speechtails.com in January and became a part of the Venture Track program in March.

According to Reno, Speechtails.com has grown tremendously since joining the program and the company would not be in the same position if it weren’t for Krause’s help.

“Chelsea matched us up with a great mentor,” Reno said. “But it is so much more then that. We are so plugged into a variety of different experts and resources that can help us out if we have questions. We’ve gained so much momentum since joining the program.”

“Prior to BizStarts and the Venture Track Program there really wasn’t another place for these kinds of companies to go to get help with a business plan, a go to market strategy and be mentored by people who’ve been there and done that,” Krause said. “To grow this region, we know it has to start with the entrepreneurs, and BizStarts is helping with that.”

Green up the city

In addition to providing educational outreach to neighborhood kids, The Urban Ecology Center focuses on bettering the lives of people who live in its community, said Ken Leinbach, executive director of the organization.

“We are really revitalizing the city’s urban areas,” Leinbach said. “If we can establish a center and an environmental presence in an area, we’ve proven that the ripple effect and good ideas that spawn from that initial contact in an area has a profound impact on the people and the neighborhood.”

The Urban Ecology Center currently has locations at Riverside Park on Milwaukee’s northeast side and in Washington Park, on the city’s west side. The center is in the process of constructing a facility on the south side of Milwaukee, near the Menomonee Valley.

“We are working with the Menomonee Valley Partners to clean up the Menomonee Valley, expand the Hank Aaron Trail and provide the same kinds of educational opportunities the neighborhoods and schools on the north side of town have to the south side schools,” he said.

The Urban Ecology Center has a history of re-energizing the neighborhoods where the centers exist, Leinbach said. Before the center was built and the educational opportunities had been put in place, Riverside Park had basically been abandoned and became a blighted property to the city, he said.

“A homeless neighborhood had moved in, crime rates skyrocketed and gang activity picked up,” Leinbach said. “We’ve managed to revitalize this neighborhood, have had similar results for the Washington Parks neighborhood and will do the same in the Menomonee Valley.”

Part of the Riverside Park revitalization project is the establishment of the Milwaukee River Greenway and the Centennial Arboretum project near the Riverside Park Urban Ecology Center. The 40-acre area will run along the Milwaukee River from North Avenue to Locust Street, and will not only serve as an expanded laboratory for the Urban Ecology research students, it will also serve as Milwaukee’s escape from the city, Leinbach said.

“It will be the most biologically diverse green space in the area,” Leinbach said. “And it will be right in the city’s backyard.”

According to Leinbach, 1,000 trees will be planted in the arboretum, and will improve the quality of life for Milwaukeeans.

The Milwaukee Rotary Club has committed $400,000 to the project. The arboretum should be open in 2013, in time for the Rotary’s centennial year.

“It was really Ken’s vision that got the Arboretum project off the ground,” said James T. Barry III, rotary past president. “We are looking forward to working with him, and we’re very pleased with him and everything he and the Urban Ecology Center has done both with the Arboretum project and for the community in general.”

Creative assets

The Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee in partnership with the Greater Milwaukee Committee launched the Creativity Works! initiative in 2009. The project seeks to document and inventory the creative economy in southeastern Wisconsin with the hopes of developing a strategic plan to grow and promote the creative economy in order to stimulate jobs and business growth in the region.

“We know that Milwaukee and the surrounding region is much more than the heavy industrial manufacturing rust belt that it was once thought of,” said Christine Harris, president of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee. “We know that we have a very vibrant and robust creative community, and the study is designed to first identify the creative economy in the region and then quantify its value in a very economical way.”

According to Harris, since January more than 500 individuals throughout the region have participated in the study either individually or in focus groups, and a planning committee of more than 50 individuals is helping to guide the process.

“Right now we have preliminary numbers,” said Harris. “We are working on the definition of a creative person to help definitively identify those jobs in the region.”

Categories of “creative businesses” and “creative talent” will be cross referenced to get an accurate count of the number of creative firms and jobs in the region and from there it will be broken up into categories like design, visual and performing, writing and cultural to define the creative entities,” Harris said.

“Dividing them up into categories will give us a better idea of where our strengths lie, and where we can begin to focus our strategic growth plan,” she said.

A research firm that is conducting the study is working with the Cultural Alliance to refine those categories, Harris said.

“The goal is to really be able to identify the assets in both ways, the number of creative businesses and the number of creative jobs in the area,” Harris said. “Then we could take that information and link and leverage these assets in a strategic focused manner for the betterment of the region.”

Harris believes the creative community in the Milwaukee region has the strength and the influence to be one of the economic arms of growth and development for the region.

“Not only because of the jobs that are available and created within the creative economy, but also because it improves the quality of life in a region and makes a community more enjoyable to live in,” she said.

Growing the creative economy and increasing the level of creative talent in a community will also increase the appeal of the region and spurs innovation, Harris said.

Final numbers from the study will be released in October, Harris said. From there the planning committee will develop a strategic plan to grow those assets. The group also hopes to build a web connectivity system so creative firms and individuals in the region can find each other and find projects.

“Most people living here don’t even realize that the creative community is so robust,” Harris said. “Identifying and leveraging the talent and companies we have will secure the talent, those jobs and projects within our community.”

The creative world stems across for profit and nonprofit organizations, Harris said.

“The creative work being done in our region stimulates more creative work, which drives innovation and makes our region more fun to be in,” she said. “Identifying the assets we have is the first step in promoting and growing the region on a national and even an international front.”