END OF THE ROAD

Last Stop for the Milwaukee Road's Investment in Milwaukee
By Michael Horne

It is the end of the Milwaukee road for CMC Heartland Partners, the successor to the former Milwaukee Road, founded in this city in 1847. The Chicago-based firm sold its last 20 acres of Milwaukee-area real estate to GM Properties, a local firm which will market the Glendale space as Glendale Partners L.L.C.
Principals Brian Monroe and Nancy Neumann purchased the vacant land along the Milwaukee border for $650,000 last month.
The land had sat idle for over two decades since the tracks were removed from what was once known as "the Glendale Yards." It is in the industrial south of the City of Glendale, essentially landlocked between N. Port Washington Rd. and N. Green Bay Ave. , north of W. Capitol Drive. Travellers on I-43 can recognize the site using the Maglio Produce warehouse and East Lake Tower as references.
The site will be cleaned up, and new industrial buildings totalling 250,000 to 300,000 square feet will be erected on the site, the new owners say. The new construction could add over $20 million value to the City of Glendale tax rolls and generate $500,000 annually in new city taxes.
The Milwaukee Road was chartered as the Milwaukee and Waukesha Rail Road by Byron Kilbourn in 1847. Kilbourn had earlier envisioned a canal to carry farm products from the interior (Waukesha) to the port of Milwaukee.
But the dawn of railroad transport dashed the economic potential of the canal, which never was used for transport, since it only ran a few blocks downstream from the Milwaukee River dam. By the 1880's it was filled in and is now N. Commerce Street.
By 1850, the first five miles of the railroad were opened for a test run. By that time the railroad had been re-christened the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, evidencing Kilbourn's ambitious plans. The road made its first commercial run to Waukesha on February 25, 1851 to great fanfare, with Edward D. Holton as superintendent.
The Milwaukee Road went on to become one of the nation's premier railroads, reaching Madison in 1854, and Prairie du Chien by 1857; like many of its counterparts, it went into and out of bankruptcy with some degree of regularity, finally coming into the hands of the CMC Heartland Partners in the 1980's.
The partners sold off the rolling stock, and, gradually, its tens of thousands of acres of real estate, situated largely in the west and northwest.
In Milwaukee it sold and/or swapped many acres in the Menomonee Valley, where the firm once employed thousands in its shops. CMC also sold land it owned known as the Humboldt Yards at what is now the Jewel Osco at N. Humboldt and E. North avenues in Milwaukee.
Finally, last month, it sold its last property in the area, the Glendale parcel mentioned above. It is expected that the property, west of N. Port Washington Rd. will be redeveloped much along the lines of the property in southern Glendale east of N. Port Washington Rd., which as recently as a decade ago was a desolate wasteland, and is now a teeming industrial area.
CMC Heartland Partners itself is in the process of winding down its operations. On Monday, December 5th, 2005 it elevated Charles J. Harrison, 48, to the position of Senior Vice President. Harrison, who had joined the company in 1990, worked in a variety of positions with the firm. During his tenure, the railroad's land investments went from 13,000 acres to about 140 acres today. Harrison reports to Lawrence S. Adelson, Chief Executive Officer.