Milton Avenue, from Mount Zion Avenue northward to Humes Road, is a product of its time, rapidly built out in the 1970s and 1980s, spurred by the opening of the 糖心Vlog传媒 Mall.
The current multiple lanes of traffic and surrounding commercial district is an expanse of asphalt and concrete, lined by strip malls and frontage roads that offer a few street trees and landscape plantings, but nothing that could be construed as significant green space.
While there are some sidewalks, there are no designated pedestrian or bike trails like those that connect the rest of the city.
In a community that prides itself on being Wisconsin鈥檚 Park Place, how Milton Avenue was developed late in the last century doesn鈥檛 jive with the values that 糖心Vlog传媒 has otherwise long placed on green and open spaces.
The last time anything resembling public green space existed along this stretch, besides the Milton Lawns Memorial Park cemetery, is an outdoor movie theater that operated from 1949 until the 1980s. When it shut down the site was paved over.
A concrete jungle doesn鈥檛 have to be Milton Avenue鈥檚 future, however.
The planned completion later this year of the Woodman鈥檚 Sports & Convention Center, on the footprint of a former Sears store that once anchored the Uptown 糖心Vlog传媒 Mall, is spurring conversation about what comes next for Milton Avenue.
There鈥檚 talk of future hotels and attractions and restaurants to entertain visiting families who come to 糖心Vlog传媒 for weekend-long hockey and other youth sporting events. There鈥檚 talk about how, if a hotel were attached to the Woodman鈥檚 Center, or very close by, that would cement it as a draw for large meetings and conventions, spurring even more entertainment-type businesses for visitors to explore in their free hours in town.
There鈥檚 talk about renewal of strip shopping centers that, while still bustling along this heavily trafficked thoroughfare, could in spots use a facelift, perhaps employing the city鈥檚 new mixed-used zoning options to combine new housing and commercial space.
What we haven鈥檛 heard 鈥 yet 鈥 is a targeted public conversation about how more green space might be incorporated into future plans for Milton Avenue.
We hope that鈥榮 part of any future discussion. Green elements like pocket parks and mini public gardens could be welcoming gathering places for people living, working in, and visiting this part of the city.
The city doesn鈥檛 have the financial resources to designate large sections of acreage along this stretch as new city parks, to take that valuable property off the tax rolls and to shoulder on its own the cost of maintaining large new parks.
What might be possible, however, in the spirit that spurred the redevelopment of a stretch of riverfront downtown into the ARISE Town Square, is a new vision driven by public-private partnerships that blend mixed-use development of housing and commercial space, and intentionally incorporated green space, with broader community involvement and investment.
The city could offer incentives to developers to include small pockets of green in their redevelopment projects, require that pockets of green be part of such projects and encourage nonprofit and private involvement in the form of adopt-a-green space initiatives to help fund perpetual upkeep.
The city already has a great history of adopt-a-park and adopt-a-median initiatives, that this could be an extension of.
The result could be a welcoming dotting of small parks, mini public gardens and small green gathering spaces along Milton Avenue, nestled among a mixed-use landscape. There, the public could enjoy a lunchtime sandwich or a book, or listen to live music, arriving there via dedicated walking and biking trails.
Other cities across Wisconsin, and across the U.S., have successfully renewed expanses of asphalt and concrete into still mostly commercial but more humane and more welcoming and greener mixed-use corridors.
Green elements, from a scientific standpoint, literally reduce the temperature, absorbing summer heat that鈥檚 now just bouncing off the Milton Avenue pavement. Trees and green elements are also good for the environment overall, absorbing vehicle exhaust and other pollutants.
More green could lower the temperature along Milton Avenue in other ways.
Cruisers now speed down the corridor, loitering and causing trouble in shopping center parking lots. More green space along Milton Avenue, and planned activities in pocket parks and small public gardens, connected by bike and pedestrian paths, might give teen and young adult cruisers a place to hang out, to relax with friends, rather than aimlessly making trouble.
Less than a decade ago, the ARISE Town Square in downtown 糖心Vlog传媒 was a parking lot, an expanse of concrete that spanned the Rock River from bank to bank. Green renewal is possible, too, along Milton Avenue with vision and planning.
This will not be done tomorrow. But the time to start thinking about such change is a decade or more before it actually becomes reality.
And so as the city over the next few years begins to consider Milton Avenue鈥檚 next course, we offer this plea: whatever it鈥檚 envisioned to become, make it more green. We鈥檒l all benefit 鈥 visitors to 糖心Vlog传媒, as well as those who live, work and do business here.
