Right now, it’s the City of Milwaukee Traffic Sign Shop, a yard at 1540 W. Canal St. filled with concrete anchor bases for streetlights, a warehouse and lots of metal poles for street signs.
In the future, the 6.8-acre site, situated on the banks of the Menomonee River, could instead be occupied by a business that manufactures or designs these sorts of items.
It’s all part of an effort to transform Milwaukee’s Menomonee River Valley from the “back door” of the city to the “front door,” says Corey Zetts, executive director of Menomonee Valley Partners.
“When these city uses were put down in the valley, the valley was a place that our community put things it didn’t want anywhere else in the city,” said Zetts. “So much has changed.”
A May fire at the Milwaukee Recycles facility on West Mount Vernon Avenue in the valley prompted some city officials to question the future of that city-owned property, with Ald. Bob Bauman asking during a Public Works Committee meeting, “Is that the highest and best use of real estate as the downtown area expands westward?”
The recycling center and the traffic sign shop aren’t the only properties that remain publicly-owned in the Menomonee Valley. The city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District own a combined total of 51 acres of riverfront land in the Menomonee River Valley, largely scattered between North 6th Street to the east and South Layton Boulevard to the west, according to the Milwaukee County GIS system.
“It’s pretty tough to conceptualize how much land they actually own,” said Gard Pecor, senior market analyst with CoStar Group Inc. “There’s a lot (of development) you can do on 51 acres.”
Long term, the Menomonee Valley Business Improvement District (BID #126) would like to see all of these publicly owned sites redeveloped, according to Zetts.
“For the Valley, I think it’s important that we really think long term about the future of the river and see it as an amenity,” said Zetts.
In 2015, the BID studied its land and determined that riverfront land should be used for light industrial uses with an emphasis on businesses that can also bring people to the valley and the river.
None of the publicly owned land in the Menomonee Valley requires river use, which is why the land would be better suited to something like City Lights Brewing, which makes use of the improved Menomonee River while honoring the Valley’s manufacturing roots, Zetts said.
Pecor, who recently took to Twitter to call attention to the 51 acres of publicly owned land in the Valley, envisions more mixed-use, bringing multifamily residential developments to the area as one of the city’s greatest needs right now.
“Retail activating these waterfronts with apartments or condos, those generate the highest taxes and also helps us improve the density and diversification of downtown,” he said.
That’s only if this land were to be freed up. A spokesperson with the city said no official action has been taken to move the recycling center or any other current city operations out of the valley, through the Redevelopment Authority is getting 10 acres of vacant city-owned land ready for development.
When it comes to the recycling center, city officials said they’ve considered moving it for years, but it’s not cheap, estimating the cost to be between $15 million and $20 million.
The benefits could be synergistic, though.
Selling the city-owned land would put it on the tax roll, increasing the property tax revenue on which Milwaukee is reliant.
Redeveloping former city land isn’t a new concept in the Valley. The Harley-Davidson Museum, The Sigma Group and Palermo’s Pizza were all built on former city-owned land.
“All of those (companies) are supplying a lot of jobs or bringing in a lot of people,” Zetts said.
Larry Stern, president and third-generation family owner of Standard Electric Supply Co. and a BID board member, has worked in the Valley since shortly after the company moved its operations there in 1986. “We were one of the first, if not the first, to recognize the potential of the Menomonee Valley,” said Stern, who’s also on the BID board. “There’s been an amazing transformation of underutilized land in the valley. …There’s no question that there’s a better use for other land like the recycling center.”
