I attended the public hearing on June 12, at the Italian Community Center, where citizens talked about the bamboo garden proposed for E. Erie Street on the banks of the harbor. As a homeowner of Bay View and a business owner in the Third Ward for 13 years, I have some reactions to what I heard.

Mr. Baumann, I am intrigued by the possibilities of this park. Even though I am near retiring age and my idea of heaven is a walk in the woods, the Third Ward is what we have made of the swamp that was ‘given’ to us by the Indians. Short of a disaster, we cannot go back to those days, rivers with marsh marigolds, cat tails, ducks, geese, heron, tamarack trees, and willows. We can, however, do better than a parking lot, or the ‘inevitable’ ten story condo building, which would steal the space from the public. The space is now bleak and uninviting. I took a walk there with a friend one evening, and found it a sort of scary place because it is so uninhabited, while thousands of people live and work within walking distance of that site.

How do we get people to use that space?

An urban park suggests a hum of activity. I am intrigued by the bamboo, which I have experienced in other cities, and by the soft surface sitting areas designated to the west of the bamboo, and by the marsh grass growing so very close to its natural habitat. Bamboo in containers? Why not? We are accustomed to container plants; they are part of modern life. I have dozens in my own house; they decorate banks, theaters, concert halls, restaurants. Why not parks? Last night Mr. Carlson reported to us how bamboo created a quiet zone in a deep-in-the-city San Francisco park. I recall other parks in the middle of cities that have done that to me. I’m not sorry that oak and birch will not thrive in this environment, but it seems to me that people will thrive there if we give them a place to sit and talk.

Yes, we are urban folks and (much as we may like to) we cannot spend all our minutes in restaurants and coffee shops. It is a gift to the people that a designer has found a economical way to make an abandoned outdoors spot an inviting outdoors spot.

Mr. Baumann, when visitors come and stay with me in Bay View, I am eager to show them Bay View because so much is going on there. But they usually want to see the central city and compare notes with other central cities they know from their travels. I am pleased to show them that I work in the economic hot house of Milwaukee, that Third Ward which is rising economically. I welcome the condo dwellers, some of whom are new to the area and maybe do not yet grasp our concept of the city and how we negotiate our lives here. They will, of course, become part of the urban environment. I hope they like what they find, and like a good neighbor adapt to our culture even while finding ways to bring with them what they believe they need.

Restaurant owners typically find that more restaurants mean more business. Competition is not a zero-sum game in a retail environment. Restaurants that totally depend on parking have already limited their seating capacity to the parking capacity of the asphalt. A glance at Locust and Oakland tells the visitor that your parking place may not be apparent when you arrive in a car, but a cluster of restaurants work to support each other, suggesting quality. Nor should one restaurant in a dense neighborhood dictate the terms of business and commerce for all who come after. Your process, talking to the neighbors, over the years, is inviting, welcome, and refreshing.

Every new restaurant and amenity makes my office in the Third Ward more valuable - to have so many lunch counters and dinner tables to choose from, to have several theaters, and that wonderful Milwaukee Public Market, and the park at the end of Broadway. Each of these things is small, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. BBG Grill (now gone) was small when I moved my office to the Third Ward, but it was a popular watering hole where folks met and spoke well of the potential of the Third Ward. A bamboo garden will be yet another people garden where ideas can be planted, nourished and grown. Bamboo will draw walkers, bicyclists, and, yes, skiers, rollerbladers and children.

Just now in the Third Ward there are two outdoors public lunch spaces: the gazebo on Broadway and the park across from MIAD. These are popular venues, opening up our minds to the inevitable, that there should and could be more, because there will be more people as there are more reasons to visit.

Finally, I want to say that as a business person I believe in investing in my business to make it grow. I do not understand how to grow a business without capital. Yet, I hear so many voices, supposedly business persons, saying that the government should not raise capital to improve our cities, our schools, our parks and our transit. This kind of talk is dead-end talk. It costs money to have a quality life; but we waste our assets if we let our city run down. A sensible level of investment is a wiser course than to wake up someday and find we cannot afford to fix the city.

A ‘no investment’ attitude is a sickness that chases the kids and the talent out of town as Mr. Brenner so poignantly articulated at the public hearing. I need the young to stay because without young people I will have no kind of quality in my retirement years.

Let’s do it.

Sincerely
William Sell,
Principal, The Last Word and TapeTranscription.com