The Innovative Bait And Switch

Once upon a time in a place called Milwaukee County, there was an area known as the County Grounds.  It was a magical place where one could gaze at historical structures knows as the Eschweiler Buildings.  Then one could move just a few paces and stand in wonder in front of a national treasure, The Monarch Trail, one of the few places in the world where Monarch butterflies would naturally congregate by the thousands during their annual migration.

One day, the evil county executive, Scott Walker, had broken his promise to preserve the County Grounds and sold it for a song to a group of wealthy land developers, some of whom belonged to another group inappropriately named as the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

The citizens weren't happy about this and tried to fight it.  But the wealthy developers had promised a big fancy university which would spur high-tech businesses to pop up and grow.  The developers told tales about how the region would be flooded in high paying jobs.  It would be a virtual land of milk and honey - or so the developers had promised.

But once the sale went through and the developers bamboozled the part-time, inept Wauwatosa City Council into letting them do what they wanted, things changed, and not for the better.

Where they had promised to preserve the Eschweiler Buildings, the now wanted to tear them down.

Where they had promised to preserve the delicate habitat of the Monarch Trail, they were now planning on doing construction within feet of it, all but guaranteeing that the area would be forever ruined for the Monarchs butterflies.

And where they had promised a fancy university and lots of well-paying, high tech jobs, they were now talking about building a fancy hotel that would create maybe a few dozen janitorial/housekeeping jobs.

But to build this hotel instead of some high tech business with all the promised high paying jobs, they needed permission of the County Board.

So the County Board met and granted the developers' request, but with the contingency that the hotel would pay the janitors and other employees would make no less than 125% of the poverty level, which comes out to be between $11 to $12 per hour.  Ironically, that's about the same about of money that County Board members will make if the plutocrats are able to complete their retaliation against them.

Then all heck broke loose!

Judging by the way that the even more evil County Emperor Chris Abele, his minions and the wealthy developers were acting, one might have thought that the Board had asked them to sacrifice their eldest born child.

Abele was very upset and, via his court jester, threatened to pull rank via the Plutocracy Law:

Brendan Conway, spokesman for County Executive Chris Abele, agreed, saying it sends a message that the county is negotiating in bad faith. He also questioned whether the board has the authority to amend the deal after the enactment of a state law limiting the board to a simple up or down vote on real estate deals. 

“We’ll need some legal clarity on that,” he said. “If this development goes away, it’s a significant amount of temporary construction jobs and it’s a decent amount of full-time jobs.”

Never mind that it would take two or three of those "full-time jobs" to support a family.

One of Abele's wholly owned subsidiaries, Supervisor Deanna Alexander (or maybe it was Conway again) echoed their shock and horror that the Board would expect the workers to be treated with the minimum of respect:

Even the Illinois-based developer that was going to come to Milwaukee to profiteer off of the land and the workers said that paying the workers two extra dollars made the whole deal - worth hundreds of millions of dollars - not worth it.  Apparently, he really, really, really needs those few thousands of dollars.  He needed to buy a round at the University Club to toast Abele, Julia Taylor and the other GMC members who made it all possible for him.

The thing to remember throughout this all too true tale is that the focus shouldn't be on the County Board who took the unpopular but righteous position of standing up for the workers.

The focus should be on Abele, his sockpuppets and the profiteers who are crying the blues of having to pay people at the rate of 125% the poverty level.  They aren't happy with not delivering on their promises, they are actually wanting to gouge Milwaukee workers and taxpayers even more.

I wish I could tell the gentle reader that this was a Grimm fairy tale, but sadly it is the grim reality that we face.

RIP County Grounds. Cause of Death: Greed

For years, I've been giving the warning regarding the endangerment of the county grounds and the treasures it contains, the Eschweiler Buildings and the Monarch Trail.

In a nut shell, then Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker sold the county grounds for a song, breaking his promise to never let the land be developed.  Then the Wauwatosa Common Council willfully ignored the experts and their own constituents, selling them out to the wealthy land developers, by ramming through approval for them to destroy the natural habitats contained on the county ground so that they could build really important things like a school no one wanted there, a hotel, more apartments, a restaurant and a strip mall.

At the beginning of the year, we caught a horrifying glimpse of things to come when the developers hired an out of state company to come up and destroy scores of century trees which weren't even near the proposed construction site.

Earlier today, I had the "opportunity" to pop in at the county grounds.  What I saw broke my heart.  The following are some before and after photos.

It is limited because they have the grounds so befouled you can no longer enter them, much less get to the Monarch Trail or the Eschweiler Buildings.  Lord only knows what they are doing to those areas.  Based on these pictures,  I shudder to think about it.

But they do have a sign to tell you what is going on:

Of course, none of the things the developers had promised during the charades they did with the Tosa Common Council has anything to do with what's on that sign.  And nothing on that sign has to do with what they are actually doing.

And who is to blame for this crime against nature and against the public trust?  Well, as stated earlier, there is Scott Walker and the Wauwatosa Common Council.  But even they are puppets for the real criminals, who were bold enough to pose in celebration of their evil:

How many members of the Greater Milwaukee Committee can you count in that picture?  There is at least three that I could spot in a minute: Sheldon Lubar, Chris Abele and Michael Cudahy.

And with Abele newly enthroned as Milwaukee County Emperor, how do you think that other county parks and assets are going to fare?  And don't think for a minute that these plutocrats and oligarchs are going to be using union companies or paying decent wages or even minority companies.  They were very specific about giving Abele full control of those things when they handed him his tiara.

The only question I have is how long will it take before people hit the tipping point and we can start working on these problems before they get any worse?

Abele Refuses To Commit To Taxpayers

I pointed out last week that the GMC members who formed a land development group called UWM Foundation had reneged on their promises to protect the natural habitat of the county grounds as they set it up for profiteering, er, I mean development.  Instead of preserving anything, they hired a company from Illinois to come up and cut down dozens of century old trees.

Eschweiler Buildings

If you want a full accounting of the saga of how the people of Wauwatosa and Milwaukee County have been repeatedly ignored and betrayed by Scott Walker, then Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier and the part time Wauwatosa Common Council, the Riverkeepers have an excellent summary.

In a nut shell, what happened is that the protests of the people were ignored in favor of the false promises of prosperity and the lure of big money and the grounds were sold for a song.  Then as things progressed through "vetting" from the Wauwatosa Common Council, more and more land was ceded to the developers.  To make things worse, the Tosa Common Council gave the developers $12 million in the form of a TIF.  And that was on top of the more than $5 million given to the developers by the federal government.

As soon as the deal was done, the developers started to change things.  Instead of restoring the Eschweiler Buildings as promised, the developers, claiming poverty, started the process to sell that land to yet another developer that wanted to tear these nationally recognized historic buildings down.  After catching too much flack, they decided they might be able to save one of the buildings - for a price.

Not they're trying to drive that price even higher, by sticking the county taxpayers with the bill for their profit taking:

Milwaukee County may be asked to take a haircut on the $13.55 million agreed-upon price for selling a large chunk of the County Grounds in Wauwatosa for a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee development in order to pay for preservation of the historic Eschweiler buildings, county supervisors were told Monday.

Wauwatosa City Administrator Jim Archambo said the city was grappling with how to meet a shortfall of $2.5 million to $6.55 million to restore five historic buildings on the site designed by noted architect Alexander Eschweiler. The century-old structures were originally used for the Milwaukee County School of Agriculture and Domestic Economy, and efforts to save the buildings were a key part of the sale negotiations some four years ago.

The county sold the buildings and an 89-acre parcel to a UWM Foundation affiliate in 2009 and has collected $5 million toward the purchase price so far. A second $5 million payment is due in 2014, with four additional annual payments of $887,500 made from 2015 through '18.

The evil County Board of Supervisors, who the GMC wants to destroy, are pointing out that the developers knew what they were getting into before they made the deal and that they made a deal with the taxpayers and ought to be expected to keep their end of the bargain.

Chris Abele, who is personal friends with the developers, who could pay for the land out of their own money if they wanted to, wasn't as ready to stand up for the taxpayers:

Brendan Conway, a spokesman for County Executive Chris Abele, said it was too early to speculate on whether the county might agree to take less money for the property.

How the heck is it to soon to expect that the developers keep their end of the bargain?

Abele is third from left, happy to
destroy the county grounds
for his rich friends.

 Well, for Abele, he is hoping that this can wait until the county board gets hamstrung so that he can give a break to his buddies for their support in his power grab.  With a greatly weakened board, he figures he can get anything he wants passed.

Furthermore, some of the developers, like Michael Cudahy, have already said that they want other parts of county property, such as the lakefront, for development as well, so they can really clean up at the taxpayers' expense.

I don't understand how anyone would want to get rid of the group of people looking out for their best interest in favor of consolidating power in the hands of one person who is only looking out for the special interests.  But then again, the only people I see really supporting this power grab are the ones beholden to Abele and the GMC.

Important Meeting In Wauwatosa

From the inbox:

RE: Limiting public involvement in the development of the County Grounds.

Issue: The City of Wauwatosa is looking to pass a Development Agreement with the UWM Real Estate Foundation. Pg 125-134 http://wauwatosa.net/archives/105/BF010813revised.pdf

Concern: This Agreement implies limiting provisions for public input on buildings, parking structures, restoration, etc. which is contrary to the Milwaukee County Resolution. We need people to come to this meeting to ensure there is a sincere commitment (via the public process) to the success of the environmental corridor by including the community throughout this development project. We are hoping to encourage the Council to amend the document to include this important provision.

When: Tuesday January 15^th, 7:30pm

Where: Wauwatosa City Hall

7725 W North Ave

Wauwatosa, 53213

Help Save The Eschweiler Buildings!

This past Friday, the Friends of the Monarch Trail hosted a Blue Moon Event on the county grounds in Wauwatosa.  The event was a smashing success:

When all the parking spaces at the Milwaukee County Parks building were full up, people started parking on the peripheries. And when they filled up, they started parking along the drive, until it was full, too.

So, you'd have to call it a capacity crowd Friday night for the Friends of the Monarch Trail's Blue Moon Party.

[...]

As the tour groups reached the Eschweilers, they learned the principal reason for Agnew's efforts in the face of all that development.

Flanking the Eschweiler Buildings on east and west are two groves, where each fall flotillas of monarchs stop to roost in clusters on the trees. It's only one of only four such annual roosting sites known in eastern Wisconsin, according to scientists at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Protecting that phenomenon of nature has become a passion and an obsession for Agnew and others who have joined her cause.

The article also mentions the Eschweiler buildings and how the Mandel Group, a private land developer, wants to raze most, if not all of the buildings and put up 192 apartments.  This would be a tragedy on many levels.  Not only would it add to the desecration of the only remaining pristine land in Milwaukee County, it would greatly endanger the Monarch Trail and the butterfly habitat.  It could also put Milwaukee County taxpayers in harm's way since the buildings have been designated as historical landmarks.

Fortunately, just as the Friends of the Monarch Trail are striving to save the butterfly's habitat, there is a movement to save the Eschweiler Buildings.  They are part of the County Grounds Coalition and have set up a website as well as a Facebook page to inform people of the peril of the buildings and the importance of saving them.

They have also started an online petition to show support for the preservation of these historic and priceless buildings. and are encouraging people to attend the next meeting of the Wauwatosa Common Council at which they are expected to discuss and vote on the future of the buildings and the Monarch habitat.  Please show your support and tell the Wauwatosa Common Council that there are things more important than pandering to wealthy land developers.

Was Walker Land Deal Illegal?

Originally posted at Milwaukee County First:

The Monarch Trail has been used as an
educational tool for children in
 Milwaukee County for years.

A few weeks ago, Milwaukee County First alerted the public to the sad waste that could be in store for two of Milwaukee County's finest and most understated treasures, the Monarch Trail and the Eschweiler Buildings which rest on the county grounds.

Despite his promises to preserve the land and turn it into a state park, then Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker manipulated events in order to sell this priceless land for a song to wealthy land developers in a no-bid contract.

It was only after the sale had been ramrodded through the Milwaukee County Board and the Wauwatosa Common Council did the true peril for these wonderful sites became known:

Oh, the powers that be, from Walker to the Board to the Common Council to the developers themselves, promised that the Monarch Trail would be preserved and that the Eschweiler Buildings would be restored and converted into apartments.

But those also proved to be lies.

The developers have already encroached upon the Monarch Trail, invading space that is supposed to be protected areas. There have been reports of large swatches of milkweed plants being mowed down.

Adding to these atrocities is the design of the “Innovation Park,” as they call it, is that the design of the layout of buildings and parking lots will drive all the natural wildlife out of the area into the neighborhoods and roads surrounding the area. There will be literally hundreds of animals killed by the loss of their habitat.

And even if the Monarch Trail remains untouched, which seems unlikely, the stopping point of the butterflies might be lost due to the disturbances and the change of the landscape which is what draws the butterflies there in the first place.

It has also recently been reported that, due to the years of neglect, the promise of preserving the Eschweiler Buildings probably will not be kept. The land developers turned around and immediately tried to sell the buildings to another private firm which would convert the buildings. This firm is now claiming that it’s too expensive to save all the buildings...

It turns out that their plan for the Eschweiler Buildings and the Monarch Trail is much worse than previously disclosed.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently reported that Mandel Group, Inc., the second developer which is looking at buying the buildings and the eight acres they rest on, said that they don't want to forsake a building or two.  They want to tear down all but one of the buildings and build 192 higher-end (read higher profit) apartments.  Their rationale is that it would be too expensive to rehab the buildings and cheaper to build new ones.

Will history be history?

To add insult to injury, the Mandel Group wants the City of Wauwatosa taxpayers to pony up another $2 million to $2.5 million to fund their razing of the buildings.  This is on top of a $12 million TIF that the city approved two years ago to put in sewers and other infrastructure to support the engineering school they are purportedly building.

As a side note, the developers said that the school had to be built on the county grounds so that it could be close to the Medical College and other facilities.  Ironically, there was enough acreage immediately next to the Medical College that they could have used which was already set with infrastructure and would have not cost anything extra to the taxpayers.  This causes wonder if the school was ever the original intent of this scheme.

It won't be just the buildings that are lost either.  The buildings sit just a few yards to the west of the great sycamore tree which is the heart of the Monarch Trail.  There is no way that they will be able to raze these buildings and build 192 apartments without doing irreparable harm to this rare roosting spot of the the migrating Monarch butterflies.

The damage to the Monarch Trail will only be compounded by the fact that the profiteering developers want to build a road running  immediately to the east of this habitat.  The wildlife that lives on this previously pristine land will literally be caught between this construction and will surely perish.  Likewise, the particular landscape and environment which has attracted the Monarchs for all these years will be forever lost.

Talk about paving over paradise to build a parking lot.

But now there is a most peculiar Walkeresque twist to the story.  It turns out that the original sale of the grounds, including the Eschweiler Buildings and the Monarch Trail, might have been illegally done.  However, not for it being a no-bid sale.

When Walker rammed through the sale, Walker had already abolished the economic development division.  Because there was no one, much less anyone qualified, to oversee the sale of the land, and things were done improperly, including notifying the Historical Society or imposing a conservation easement to protect the property.  Because of this, the deal should be immediately stopped and could possibly be negated altogether:

"I don't think it has any bearing on what we do," City Attorney Alan Kesner said. "There is nothing formal in front of us right now. (Mandel) has made an informational presentation so far. There is no action that we are prepared to take at this time."

Mandel did, however, announce in Thursday's session that he would need to raze the four of buildings if he were to proceed with his plans for residential redevelopment of the tract as apartments, including 192 new-built units surrounding the remaining Eschweiler building.

He did not just suggest but asserted that he would have to withdraw from the project if he were forced to retain all the buildings and restore them to historic preservation standards, at a cost he estimated at $11 million.

That would throw the buildings and the land immediately surrounding them back to the Real Estate Foundation and force it to put out another request for proposals to redevelop the historic district.

And, if the state Historical Society should insist and prevail, it could mean that RFP would have to go out with a strict proviso that all the buildings must be preserved.

The Administration Building, the only one
developers would save.

Unsurprisingly, the profiteering developers that Walker sold the county grounds too would not respond to the reporter's attempts at contacting them.

If the sale of the land is negated, it could mean that the county would have to reimburse the developers for $15 million, something which they could not afford, considering the massive debt that Walker left the county in, not to mention how he has slashed shared revenue and limited the county's ability to raise revenue.

In summary, we see what is a continued pattern wherever Walker is in charge of something.  He arbitrarily decides that he wants something done, usually to the benefit of wealthy friends and campaign contributors, regardless of public opinion or whether it is in the public's best interest.  He then manipulates the situation - even if it means either ignoring the law or changing it - to meet his desired outcome.  Then, as it inevitably must because of the questionable legality of his moves, the deal blows up.  And it is the taxpayers and the citizens that are left holding the bag and having to clean up the mess, usually at great expense.

The Symbol Of Scott Walker's Legacy

Long time readers of Cognitive Dissidence know that one of the greatest atrocities committed by Scott Walker as Milwaukee County Executive was when he reneged on his promise to preserve the county grounds and sold them for a song to wealthy land developers, some of whom just happened to be supporters of his.

Despite repeated cries of outrage and warning, the County Board and the City of Wauwatosa blindly allowed this to happen.

As we had feared, the worst is coming true.

The Monarch Trail is being threatened by developers and may not survive as one of the rare roosting spots for the migrating Monarch butterflies.

Adding to the travesty is that now the historic Eschweiler Buildings are in danger of being razed, because Walker's years of neglect has made them too costly to restore.

There is no better symbol of the type of "leader" Walker is than the sad tale of the county grounds.

Milwaukee Couple Do What Milwaukee County Cannot (Or Will Not)

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a story in this morning's paper about a Bay View couple who is restoring a storied home designed by Alexander Eschweiler.

It's good to see that some people have an interest in local treasures designed by Eschweiler. It is a fabulous looking house, to say the least.

It also points out the utter shame that Scott Walker cannot, or more aptly, will not, show the same appreciation for the buildings he was charged with preserving.

Can this man be any more of an embarrassment to Milwaukee County?

Oops! I Did It Again!

The issue of the Eschweiler Buildings keep getting attention, and now I've got my name in another local publication's online page.

Another one of Charlie Sykes' ankle-biting attacks in 3...2...1...

The Neglect of the Eschweiler Buildings

The whole story, including pictures is at Milwaukee County First.

In a nutshell, it appears that Scott Walker are purposely neglecting the Eschweiler Buildings for nefarious purposes:

It is not surprising that Scott Walker would let these building fall into ruin, whether to have them raised for new development or other purposes. He is not from this area and does not share our pride of our history or understand the significance of these grounds. Furthermore, he is as shallow as only a life long politician can be, and only sees the grounds as something to be used to advance his own personal agenda, his political career.