Last month, a plaza at Ivanhoe Place on Milwaukee’s East Side opened, closing a portion of the street to vehicles, providing more space for people and less space for cars, at a busy four-road intersection that is considered among the city’s
most dangerous for pedestrians.
In November, the Common Council
approved a new tax incremental district for the East Side to fund several improvements along the East North Avenue corridor, of which the creation of Ivanhoe Plaza was among the first.
Borne out of the city’s effort to fight reckless driving the East Side Business Improvement District also
supported the change.
The 4,000-square-foot plaza replaced 12 metered parking stalls with picnic tables, greenery, cornhole and chalk, with concrete barricades and planters to block a portion of the road off from car traffic. The plaza pedestrianizes a half-block of Ivanhoe Place east of Farwell Avenue with the Crossroads Collective food hall and Sip and Purr Cat Café on one side and Hooligan’s tavern on the other.
“North Avenue is not a hospitable environment,” said Tim Gokhman, managing director of Milwaukee-based
New Land Enterprises, which owns
Crossroads Collective. “It is designed to move traffic. It is not designed to care about people.”
Gokhman said he supported the creation of the plaza as an effort to create a people-oriented urban gathering space, but also said that these environments can create an environment more conducive to business.
“(When) people talk about Paris and Amsterdam and New York they never say, ‘We like going places it’s easy to drive around,’” Gokhman said. “…More people is good for business, more people is better for the neighborhood and more people using that space is a success.”
[caption id="attachment_571349" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
Tables, greenery and cornhole at Ivanhoe Plaza.[/caption]
Since the opening of the plaza, guests at Crossroads stay longer, especially families with children, according to Paige Hammond, general manager of Crossroads Collective, which is a food hall with a collection of vendors situated around a common dining space.
“We had an environment where people would typically come and then leave, but the plaza has made people hang around more and it’s created a much more social environment,” Hammond said.
Next to Crossroads is the
Sip and Purr Cat Café that opened in 2018. The café has two sides: the cat lounge side where guests can book a time slot to play with the adoptable cats and the café side which offers things like pastries, coffee and beer.
While supportive of pedestrian and bike-friendly environments, and agreeing that something should be done to make Ivanhoe safer, Sip and Purr founder and owner Katy McHugh said the plaza doesn’t benefit her business as much as it does others’
“The people who sit out here and day drink and play cornhole, those are completely different people than who come to a cat café,” she said.
Pride weekend at the beginning of June historically has been one of the café’s busiest weekends; however, this year the café saw a 51% decrease in revenue for that weekend, according to McHugh.
With the road closed to vehicle traffic, McHugh thinks the café has lost exposure to out-of-town customers who are coming to festivals like Pridefest or Summerfest.
“It might be nice for people who live in the area, but for our customers coming from Madison, Waukesha, West Allis… this is not for them,” McHugh said.
[caption id="attachment_571348" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
A view of Ivanhoe Plaza looking west.[/caption]
While noticing an increase in foot traffic since the plaza opened, it hasn’t resulted in an increase in sales or bookings to see the cats.
Now, McHugh said she's considering moving her business out of the building, though hasn't made a final decision.
Hooligan’s tavern, which also sits on the plaza, did not respond to request for comment, and individual vendors within Crossroads were not available to comment by deadline.
People using the plaza were split on how often they see themselves using it and how much it might bring them into a particular business, but all agreed on feeling safe there.
"On a lot of the sidewalk patios that restaurants have I still kind of feel like I'm on the street, so I for sure feel safer here, ... but I don't live in the area so I'm not sure how much I'll actually use the space," said Ally Farris, who was sitting on the patio after getting lunch at Hooligan's.
The idea for the plaza first appeared in the city’s 2009 Northeast Side Area Plan, which called for redeveloping a full block of Ivanhoe Place – between North Farwell and North Prospect avenues – into “a convertible plaza that can serve as a parking, delivery area, a drivable street, and a plaza or courtyard, depending on use, time of day and activity.”
Not all of the East Ivanhoe Place block was converted to a plaza for this project. The eastern portion was converted to a two-way street, allowing continued motor vehicle access to the Educators Credit Union drive-through window via North Prospect Avenue.
The plaza is not in its completed state as renderings show further upgrades to the area and some programming is expected as early as this summer, such as live music and trivia, according to Hammond.
[caption id="attachment_560177" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
A rendering of the potential plaza at Ivanhoe Place.
Rendering from City of Milwaukee[/caption]
