When Laura Bray took over as executive director of Menomonee Valley Partners Inc. (MVP) in 2004, five years of work to revitalize the valley was just starting to come to fruition and the public was finally able to envision what the valley could offer once its redevelopment was complete.
“The activity has reinforced itself and generated a lot of forward momentum,” said Mick Hatch, a partner in the real estate practice of Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner LLP and president of the board for MVP. “I think everybody now is a believer in the valley, where seven or eight years ago you could not even get there.”
Hatch was one of the founders of MVP, a public-private partnership established in 1999 to redevelop the once-blighted valley in an economical and environmentally sustainable manner.
Although demolition, road construction, funding and some projects were underway when Bray left the Milwaukee Department of City Development to take the reins at MVP, Bray has been credited with changing the face of the valley.
“(Laura) has lots of energy and enthusiasm, which has become infectious,” Hatch said. “She is able to keep a huge group of people, you might call them stakeholders, involved in and excited about the valley.”
In addition to more than 20 board members, MVP works with hundreds of volunteers and businesses located in and around the valley, Hatch said.
“She works with the city, the county and the state,” Hatch said. “She has even gone to Washington several times and helped us obtain federal funding for the valley.”
For her work in her quasi-public office, Bray is the recipient of the 2007 Robert B. Bell Sr. Best Public Partner Award. The award is given annually by the Robert B. Bell Sr. Real Estate Chair at Marquette University and Small Business Times to a person in the public sector who is an advocate for commercial real estate development in southeastern Wisconsin.
From 1998 to the beginning of 2007, about $149 million of public infrastructure investments and $541 million in private investments have gone into the valley and its business improvement district, excluding Miller Park, Bray said. The public investments include the $50 million Sixth Street bridge and the $52 million extension of Canal Street. Both projects improved access to the valley.
When it was established in 1999, Menomonee Valley Partners was charged with developing a 140-acre area at the west end of the valley, known as the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center (MVIC). From the beginning, 50 percent of that land was dedicated to trails, parks, open space, storm water treatment and remaining interior roads. That left 60 acres available for manufacturing companies to purchase.
The MVIC has attracted several businesses, and MVP recently announced that only 38 acres remain available for sale there.
“Part of my job is to educate and work with (the property owners), because not only are we saving the businesses money, but we are setting them up to get the biggest bang for their commercial real estate (dollar), from tax base, to the number of jobs at a site, to building capacity being better here than anywhere in southeastern Wisconsin,” Bray said.
Highlights of development that have occurred in the valley in recent years included: the Potawatomi Bingo Casino, which is building a $240 million, 500,000-square-foot expansion; the $95 million, 130,000-square-foot Harley-Davidson Museum that is under construction; the new, 21,600-square-foot Badger Railing Inc. facility; Caleffi North America Inc., which moved from Franklin to a new 35,000-square-foot facility in the valley; Taylor Dynamometer Inc., which plans to move from New Berlin to a new 43,350-square-foot production plant that is under construction in the valley; Palermo Villa Inc.’s new 135,000-square-foot production plant and Proven Direct Inc.’s plans to move from Menomonee Falls to occupy part of a 144,000-square-foot building being developed by Ziegler-Bence in the valley.
In addition, Wauwatosa-based Derse Inc., recently announced that it plans to move to a 160,000-square-foot building that will be built in the MVIC.
One of the current focuses for MVP is fundraising for the redevelopment of the Airline Yards, which consists of property south of the river near the railroad tracks. Once completed, people will be able to go there to take advantage of a park made with earthen mounds recycled from debris from the Marquette Interchange reconstruction. The park also will include river access and the Hank Aaron State Trail. The project will cost an estimated $50 million, Bray said. MVP has already raised $40 million with city, state and federal investments. A capital campaign is a strong possibility to raise the remaining $10 million, she said.
Meanwhile, MVP is also working hard to sell off the remaining 38 acres in the MVIC to industrial and manufacturing companies who have a certain number of employees, pay a certain hourly wage and will serve as a catalytic addition to the current businesses in the valley, Bray said.
“This is critical land and it makes a better place for employers to attract new employees in the labor market,” Bray said. “Now is the time to develop in the valley.”
Previous winners of the Robert B. Bell Sr. Best Public Partner Award have included: John Antaramian, former mayor of Kenosha; Gordon Kacala, executive director of the Racine County Economic Development Corp. (RCEDC); Richard Maslowski, Glendale’s city administrator; and West Milwaukee Village President Ronald Hayward and Village Administrator Tim Freitag.
The award is named after the late Robert B. Bell Sr., who was a significant developer of commercial real estate in northern Illinois. His son, Peter Bell, is developing the Pabst Farms project in Oconomowoc.
