"BOOMGAARD" NAME GOOD AS "GOLD"

[UPDATE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 14th, 2008 -- BOOM GOES BUST -- Greg Kowalski of Metro Milwaukee Development News attended last evening's meeting at which the name "Boomgaard" was put in abeyance. Kowalski claims Oak Creek Mayor Dick Bolender was the "hero" of the event for admitting the cities "could be making a giant mistake." The Milwaukeeworld Hound Dog Team will continue to cover this story, and will delve into how two suburban communities like Franklin and Oak Creek are struggling with the legal and administrative difficulties involved with intergovernmental cooperation. Stay tuned! --Ed.]

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them." -- Bill Vaughn

"The word "Boomgaard" is Dutch for "orchard" -- Cities of Franklin and Oak Creek, WI joint press release April 23rd, 2008.

A MilwaukeeWorld Hound Dog Team report

Special to the readers of milwaukeeworld

By Michael Horne

There is a new name for S. 27th Street as it slices through Oak Creek and Franklin: Call it "Boomgaard." C'mon! We dare you! You'll get used to it! It's PR 101!
"Boomgaard" is brought to you by the branding wizards at The Zizzo Group. Remember them? Three years ago this week, Zizzo gave Marquette University sports teams the name "Gold." You remember what a success that was.
The Journal Sentinel called the Gold a "14-karat Fiasco." Anne Zizzo said it was "PR 101" that people would get used to the "Gold" name, but it was dropped within a week after much public outcry.
By November, Elizabeth Hockerman of the Small Business Times wrote "Crisis Management 101: Zizzo Survives Own PR Nightmare." And now she's back.

We are supposed to be happy that the Cities of Franklin and Oak Creek have teamed up in a joint venture to provide a "high-quality urban atmosphere, to attract, secure, and retain high-quality development,business and institutions," on their shared, commercial border. Their portion of S. 27th "Straat" -- The Boomgaard, if you will -- runs six miles from the City of Milwaukee border to the Racine County Line and was home to truck farms and orchards for generations.
The promotional material refers to "settlers living off of the land until the 1970s when grocery stores became prevalent." Who among us living then does not remember the peasants of Oak Creek and Franklin scurrying down to their root cellars as darkness approached, their barefoot children gathering raspberries on the side of the road waiting for the day that a supermarket might come to town?
For this the taxpayers paid $329,633 to the Zizzo Group as part of its subcontract with engineering firm HNTB for "branding and creative marketing theme work." It was the unanimous favorite of the representatives of the cities and their stakeholders, according to a Franklin Now article by Julie Becker reporting the decision. The councils met in closed session, in apparent violation of the state open meetings law, and the stakeholders are unidentified. However, both communities have been courting large developers; they hardly show any influence of New Urbanist design principles, they both endorse new freeway exchanges on the corridor while not objecting to the partial closure of a freeway exit at the corridor's gateway to the City of Milwaukee, which isn't mentioned anywhere in their plans. However, the S. 27th Corridor Master Plan by Schreiber Anderson Associates of Madison does call for more urban principles than the communities have embraced in the past with such developments as the monstrous NML campus.
The public response to "Boomgaard" was similar to Marquette's response three years ago. The Oak Creek mayor says he wants the name changed. Franklin resident John Michlig in "Sprawled Out," ("The Search for Community in the American Suburb") wrote,"Surprise! Nobody likes the name!" Public comments seem to oppose the name -- and the $370,000 expense.
Names rejected by the panel include such catchy suburbanisms as "CityGate," "Twin Corridor," "27 South" and "MetroSouth." They also considered several variations of the word "orchard," but too many business districts and neighborhoods had already played that one to death.

The Zizzo Group press release announcing the firm's selection was dated September 10th, 2007, and carried the contact name of Jeff Fleming, who then worked for Zizzo. Fleming left not long after and has since joined Howl Fire, an American Indian-owned public relations firm.
Was Boomgaard a little "Senior Prank" he pulled on his boss before splitting from the firm? "Hey boss, they're going to love this name! Let's run with it! Oops! I'm leaving for a new job. It's your problem now!"

HNTB, the engineering firm that hired Zizzo, makes no mention of the Oak Creek - Franklin S. 27th Street contract anywhere on its website.

DUTCH? WHAT DUTCH?

The Dutch word "Boomgaard" is in honor of the Dutch settlers, who were said to have arrived in Franklin starting in the 1840's, according to the Zizzo press release, which also cites Polish settlers in Oak Creek starting in the 1830s along with Franklin's Irish and everybody's Germans. However, an examination of the census for 1850 for both Oak Creek and Franklin show no names that one would associate with Holland or with Poland. Nor are the two countries listed as a place of origin for settlers, although portions of ethnic Holland and of ethnic Poland may have been under German control at that time.
Maybe they could call it "Harlem." That's a venerable Dutch place name. The Polish word for orchard is "Ogrod," if that helps.

--Michael Horne
[There will be a meeting on Boomgaard issues today, Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, at 4 p.m. at the Oak Creek City Hall. I sure wish I could find where they post the agendas and minutes for these things. --Ed.]