Below are the slide thumbnails of the presentation, or you can view the PDF if you prefer »

 

Revised Thesis

Establishing a place where creative people can gather and learn, or start a business, will be of great value to Milwaukee’s economy. Producing highly innovative design and production within the city will foster the creation of many related business, encourage job growth, and reverse the exodus of jobs to business parks in the suburbs or overseas. Milwaukee has the potential to be the leader in innovative industrial design and production. The best way to bring notoriety and investment to Milwaukee’s renewed innovative spirit in the 21st century is to build a signature facility to draw international attention. The exemplar project ideally will be located in a formerly prosperous, but presently distressed part of the city combining design and production under one roof to serve as a combined school and business incubator; an icon and a catalyst for future growth.

Thesis Claim

Milwaukee is in desperate need of and economic stimulus. Since the 1960s, Milwaukee has seen a steady decline in its manufacturing base and the replacements in the service industry has not earned much respect. Milwaukee’s global images was, and now is, manufacturing. We build motorcycles at Harley-Davidson, motors at Briggs and Stratton, and we brew beer at Miller. Creating highly innovative technologies in the city will encourage job growth and reverse the exodus to business parks in the suburbs. Milwaukee has the potential to be a leader in innovative industrial design and production. The best way to bring notoriety and investment to Milwaukee’s renewed innovative spirit in the 21st century is to build a signature educational and manufacturing facility to draw international attention. The exemplar project ideally will be located in a formerly prosperous, but presently distressed part of the city combining design and production under one roof to serve as an icon and a catalyst for future growth.

Abstract

What is a city? On the physical level it is a collection of buildings, roads and infrastructure allowing people, on the human level, to live, work and play within this physical context. Each city is unique with regard to size, quality, features, landmarks, history and more. Milwaukee is a city rooted in its industrial past and currently struggling to adapt to the post-industrial present. By most metrics, Milwaukee is struggling. Auto manufacturing jobs have left for foreign countries, not to return. Steel and metal fabrication has declined. Breweries have
consolidated or shut down with Miller as the exception, who now brews most of the legacy beers. The result is a number of missing teeth in the city landscape. These vacant and dilapidated lots disrupt the city, punching holes in the urban fabric. My goal for my thesis is to design a project which repairs this fabric with a new program emphasizing integrated project delivery by streamlining design and production into a single facility to begin to restore Milwaukee image of education, innovation and manufacturing dominance.

Below are the slide thumbnails of the presentation, or you can view the PDF here if you prefer »

 

Solvay offers the most interesting site with its numerous connections to local infrastructure and it’s tendency to remain industrial. Reed Street Yards and the Washington Interlocking, due to their proximity with the Third Ward, Downtown, the National Avenue business corridor and the Harley-Davidson Museum are better suited for a commercial and residential project. Additionally, several students have recently done investigations on the Reed Street Yards, so I would like to try a newer site.

Below is the Site Analysis Presentation I gave to my class this week we ran out of time and I was feeling confident about my analysis, so it has been tabled and I will present it with more stuff later. Below are the thumbnails from the slides, or if you prefer you can view the PDF version »

 

Solvay Coke and Gas Company

The first site is the former Solvay Coke and Gas Company. The site is located along Kinnikinnick Avenue flanked by the harbor to the east, the river to the south and the Amtrak rail corridor to the west. The only access is on Greenfield Avenue. Originally named Milwaukee Coke and Gas, it was incorporated in 1902. Solvay supplied Milwaukee with gas for gas lights and produced coke for steel production. At its peak, Solvay operated as many as 200 coke ovens 24 hours a day turning millions of tons of coal into coke and gas. A portion of the site was also used for tanning. The plant was shuttered in 1983 and mostly demolished between 2003 and 2005. The office building, machine shop and other small structures remain, but the building containing the coke ovens has been reduced to a pile of rubble with only the two partially demolished smokestacks remaining.

As can be expected with a heavy industrial and tanning use, the site is heaving contaminated with mercury, arsenic, cyanide and cancer-causing polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. The contamination is spread over the entire site and the silt along the Kinnikinnick River has buried contaminates and has a ‘no anchor’ rule as to not stir it up. A Superfund Alternative Site, the ‘brownfield’ will require enormous clean-up before it is able to be reused.

The site exchanged hands a number of times in the 1990s and 2000s with the intent to turn the site into residential use, the most recent proposal had 14, 20 story towers valued at $1.5 billion. Seemingly with each new owner, more of the site was removed, but nothing is replaced. 2004 saw the removal of the main gas facility, which was done negligently and haphazardly and resulted in the release of asbestos into the environment and left within the rubble on the site, earning a $275,000 fine. The current owner, Golden Marina Causeway, LLC, seems disinterested in doing anything with the site and is tax delinquent. Recently, the city ordered one of the buildings to be razed as it was a place for vagrants to do drugs. For all intents and purposes, the site is abandoned and given the current economic situation it is unlikely to be redeveloped for residential use.

I propose to maintain the industrial context with a project which preserves the remaining office building and perhaps the smokestack and reinvents the site for a new purpose. The site would also make connections to the south side across the Kinnikinnick River, to the west across or under the railway corridor, and to the east with a new harbor area.

Reed Street Yards

The second site is located along the Menomonee River canals adjacent to the new Harley-Davidson Museum. The former Reed Street Yards is a completely vacant site formerly used as a railway freight yard for over a hundred years. The site is flanked by recent redevelopments in the 5th Ward along the east and south sides, by the Menomonee River and Harley-Davidson Museum on the north, and the 6th Street Viaduct on the west.
The Reed Street Yard site was also slated for various redevelopment projects but nothing has taken shape. Unlike Solvay, there is little to no site contamination, no buildings to demolish and few other challenges to immediate development with the site. Given the nearby residential and commercial, the industrial use for the site would have to be noiseless and not produce any other ill effects which would disturb the neighbors. The Reed Street Yards enjoy connections to existing roadways, proximity to new development, as well as a rail corridor and waterway. Connections to the Harley plot across the river are likely, as well as improving access to the 6th Street viaduct.

Washington Street Interlocking

The third site is more ambiguous than the other two. It is roughly called the Washington Street Interlock and encompasses the area bound by South Water Street on the east, the Amtrak railway on the west, Florida Street on the north and Washington Street on the south. The site formerly was the location of a major crossroads of rail lines from the Milwaukee Road and the Chicago and Northwestern rail lines. The C&N entered from the south-east and exited the north-west in the 3rd Ward, and the Milwaukee Road entered from the south and exited to the north-east to downtown and the Menomonee Valley. The area between this triangular form was used as a yard, called the Florida Yards terminating at Florida Street. The area saw very heavy rail traffic for over 100 years as it was the primary route to Chicago. Today it has been broken up into a number of different uses. The railway corridor, formerly the Milwaukee Road is now operated by the Soo and carries Amtrak traffic to the Milwaukee Intermodal Station and freight to the Menomonee Valley. The former C&N line is abandoned. The north branch now is the parking lot for Summerfest and the Italian Community center and the rest of the line north was ripped up to become a bike trail running past the Art Museum north through the East Side. The south branch passes by the Solvay site and exits into Bay View.

The site is now used for light industrial by J Marchese Fruits and Usinger Sausage. Seemingly abandoned warehouses exist on the north end and marina buildings along the river. Of the three sites, the Washington Street Interlocking has the most existing buildings and infrastructure and is closest to existing industrial developments in the 5th Ward.

After looking up the permit file with the city, it appeared that they ordered the building to be razed because, “building is unsecure and variants [are] living inside.” Oh, well. No permits filed for demolishing any part of the main site so far. But the owner has not exactly done things by the book when they failed to have the asbestos removed before they tore down the coke facility in 2004. I wouldn’t be really surprised if I came by someday and found the whole site flattened.

Below are a few photos I snapped of the demolished building as well as a before image. I also found a pretty cool tree that has grown into the railway guardrail.

 

As can be expected with a heavy industrial and tanning use, the site is heaving contaminated with mercury, arsenic, cyanide and cancer-causing polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. The contamination is spread over the entire site and the silt along the Kinnikinnick River has burred contaminates and has a ‘no anchor’ rule as to not stir it up. A Superfund Alternative Site, the ‘brownfield’ will require enormous clean-up before it is able to be reused.

The site exchanged hands a number of times in the 1990s and 2000s with the intent to turn the site into residential use, the most recent proposal had 14, 20 story towers valued at $1.5 billion. Seemingly with each new owner, more of the site was removed, particularly in 2004 with the removal of the main gas facility. That particular demolition was done negligently and haphazardly and released asbestos into the environment and left the rubble on the site, resulting in a $275,000 fine. The current owner, Golden Marina Causeway, LLC, seems disinterested in doing anything with the site and is currently tax delinquent. For all intents and purposes, the site is abandoned and given the current economic situation it is unlikely to be redeveloped for residential use. I propose to maintain the industrial context with a project which preserves the remaining office building and perhaps the smokestack and reinvents the site for a new purpose. The site would also make connections to the south side across the Kinnikinnick River, to the west across or under the railway corridor, and to the east with a new harbor area.