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Milwaukee Receives $200,000 Grant to Create Community Space Downtown

Daniel Lobo, Flickr
Fred Kent says the "beach" created in a park in the heart of Detroit has contributed to the city's rebirth.

Southwest Airlines created the Heart of the Community program to "activate public spaces in the heart of communities." 

Milwaukee has been selected as one of six cities nationwide to receive a $200,000 grant. The funds will target revitalization at 4th Street and Wisconsin Avenue in downtown. 

The grant is broken into two pieces - $100,000 in funding and $100,000 of consultation from the Project for Public Spaces.

Fred Kent created the organization and has worked closely with previous winners. Based in Brooklyn, his team beams out to cities around the globe to help communities with placemaking, or " inspiring people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community."

While in Milwaukee last week, Kent tried to cruise as many streets as possible. The impression he left with is that the city has a lot of sterile streetscapes.

“The lanes are wide, the sidewalks are narrow and the buildings aren’t really alive as they could be,” Kent says.

His motto is “lighter, quicker, cheaper."

“You create destinations at corners; if you have four corners with destinations at them you literally have a square that some streets go through; so you can slow the traffic down, so these are little things that can change the perception of a street dramatically in a very short time,” Kent says.

"Great cities are alive all year long." - Fred Kent

 Among the places Kent sees promise are spaces just south of downtown in Milwaukee’s Third and Fifth Wards.

“Those are areas you see so much energy, but it needs to come out in the public spaces and people did say from June to September the city is alive. But you can’t be alive just three months, it has to happen all year round. And great cities do – they are alive all year long,” Kent says.

What he also sees is a city that is proud of its historic structures. But he says they’re missing opportunities to create life that spills into the neighborhood.

Credit josepha, flickr
Pabst Brewery development in Milwaukee.

He points to the Pabst Brewery complex.

“All you see are these brick building – there is no presence of anything. The doors are just the same as they were when they were the brewery. There’s no extension, there’s no life on the outside. A sense of people and seeing other people have pleasure is the best sign you can have. But if you can’t see people, all you see is buildings. So people in Milwaukee talk about the buildings they have, and not the places,” Kent says.

He is no less critical Milwaukee’s emerald necklace of parks. “When you drive around and you see green spaces with a few benches and you call those parks, there is very little to do,” Kent says.

In contrast, he points to a recent project in Detroit, Michigan. In the middle of the city, designers created a beach without water - somewhere people could play volleyball and hang out.

“This was sort of the invitation to everyone in the downtown and outside. And that was sort of the bottom and Detroit is really on a fast track to becoming a great city again,” Kent says.

Credit TROY FREUND PHOTOGRAPHY
NEWaukee's Night Market on 4th and Wisconsin.

As for Milwaukee's Southwest Airlines Heart of the Community grant, 4th and Wisconsin has already experienced glimmers of life recently. NEWaukee created a series of night markets on the lot.

Kent says a renaissance on 4th and Wisconsin could help Milwaukee tackle one of its most troubling challenges –segregation.

“It’s deeply ingrained in Milwaukee that is a very tough issue and when you don’t have really good gathering places, you don’t have places for people to get together. So people can’t get together but that’s what 4th and Wisconsin does. So once you start that activation, you start to see how profound it can be for a whole city,” Kent says.
 

"People attract people." - Fred Kent

He says people attract people. “So one you get people doing something, people are going to be driving by, slowing down and realize something is happening."

Kent says his model is built on accelerated transformation – no waiting around for one more meeting or model.

“They’re really experiments, so you can make mistakes; but you’re doing it and you’re trying it and you’re layering new things on then all of a sudden people start doing more and then it becomes a real place,” he says.

Kent suggests if you have a chance, take a trip to Detroit’s beach to be inspired.

Susan is WUWM's environmental reporter.
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