Downtown Momentum

I am excited about downtown South Milwaukee, and where it’s headed.

Here are a few reasons why.

For starters, I am proud to announce that three new destination retail businesses are planning to open downtown in coming weeks – exactly the kind of businesses we need more of in our city center.

• One, MKE City Sippers, is a new upscale coffee shop opening at 911 Milwaukee Ave., between I Can’t Resist Kids Resale and Dowling Community Acupuncture. Owned by Nicole Maxey, a young professional excited about the prospects of our city center, it will serve Anodyne Coffee (terrific, if you haven’t been to their stores in Bay View and Walker’s Point), gourmet lattes, fair trade loose leaf Rishi tea, Dang! Butterscotch Root Beer, cupcakes and other locally baked goods. MKE City Sippers — pictured below — will also be offering free wifi, books to read, fun coffee mugs and tea infusers, unique gift items and more. They are hoping to open the week of October 27. Check out their Facebook page in the meantime.
• The former Voice Journal/Graphic/Kelly Driving School building is also getting new life as a retail storefront for Troy Kinunen. Troy is the owner of Mears Online Auctions, located in the beautifully redone St. Mary’s Hall in town. His storefront at 723 Milwaukee will feature a unique mix of old-fashioned candy, novelties and collectibles. Troy just received approval from the Plan Commission to move ahead with a complete overhaul of the building, including construction of a second-floor condo and storage space to go along with the retail storefront. He expects to open Dec. 1.
• And, finally, the former South Milwaukee Carpet/Garden Theater won’t stay closed for long. While the carpet store at 1007 Milwaukee closed this summer with the retirement of the Lugauers, their son, Gordon, who grew up above the carpet shop, has purchased the building. His plans? To open a third location for his Board Game Barrister business, joining existing locations at the Greenfield Towne Center and Bayshore Town Center. Tentative opening date is Oct. 27.

Please join me in welcoming all three of these businesses to town — and join me in patronizing them. I’ll keep you posted as their grand openings draw near … and pledge to keep working my hardest to attract just these types of businesses to our fair city.

That’s just the start when it comes to downtown. Hopefully you’ve already seen some of the other efforts underway to improve our city center. For example, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are rediscovering downtown South Milwaukee through special events.

• The South Milwaukee Downtown Market continues to rock and roll, and this summer its 11th Avenue location got a new look with a new road and streetscaping project. (The plantings just went in last week.)
• The first two Guardian Credit Union Movies in the Market have also been a hit, both drawing hundreds of attendees following the farmers’ markets. The third outdoor movie, “Hocus Pocus,” is showing following the market’s season-ending Fall Family Festival this Thursday, Oct. 9. And Guardian — a proud downtown business of its own — has already committed to doing three more downtown movies in 2015!
• We’re also bringing Rocketober to downtown South Milwaukee on Saturday, Oct. 25, with a special trick-or-treating scavenger hunt just for merchants in our city center. More details to come.
• Christmas will also be special downtown, with events like the tree lighting and parade and a new “shop local” event being planned by the South Shore Chamber of Commerce. (Stay tuned for details on this one.) The South Milwaukee Community and Business Association has also led the charge in replacing more than 60 street decorations, purchasing new LED light fixtures, among other changes.

We’ve also made progress in more proactively enforcing our building codes. Hopefully you’re seeing a difference, one building at a time. A new window her, a paint job there, or maybe removal of an ugly awning. We have lots more work to do in this area, and we’re doing it, putting a laser focus on making sure our downtown building owners live up to the baseline of our city ordinances. Too many of them haven’t been.

And as we do this – all of this – we’re making strong progress toward the long-term work we need to do downtown as well. That starts with our long-overdue downtown plan.

There are lots of moving parts here, including the potential hiring of a citywide economic development director, formation of a downtown South Milwaukee advisory committee, and selection of a third-party consultant to aid us in the planning process. The economic development director position and planning consultant are both funded in the first executive budget I’ve been a part of as mayor, finalized late last week.

So, lots going on. Excited? I am. Much more to come!