STOPLIGHTS FOR PUBLIC MARKET INTERSECTION

Just One Block East of Existing Controlled Intersection,
May Ease Access to Market Destinations,
Crossing Street to be No Longer "Wicked Hop"

"Scene on the Street"

Text and Photos

By Michael Horne

City crews hand-dig the corners of N. Broadway and E. St. Paul Ave. [above] on Monday, April 26th, 2009 in preparation for the installation of a controlled intersection there. It is the site of the Milwaukee Public Market, and its newly opened adjunct, Good Harvest Market [left in photo]. The workers shown are laboring in front of the Wicked Hop [awning visible upper right].

The intersection is currently a four-way stop; two more than this time a year or so ago, when it truly was a Wicked Hop just to jump across the street in the face of heedless drivers.
The area is increasingly popular with motorists, pedestrians and those who care to dine al fresco to jackhammers' din.
Beyond the concrete barriers shown in the photo, crews from Michels Corporation have dug access points along Broadway for the installation of communications cables for AT&T. Contrary to reports, this is not a stimulus project.
The transcontinental cable runs right down the street, one reason why the AT&T building was located so conspicuously there in the 1920s. However, the folks at Michels HQ in Brownsville didn't have much information on their work here when contacted by Milwaukeeworld, and wondered why you would even want to know about it.
Because it is there!
(Michels is a huge corporation, but CEO Ruth Michels still signs the checks herself.)
In the top photograph, city workers are seen between the Milwaukee Public Market and a Richard Taylor sculpture.

A "Chic" Grill Set for Third Ward

... Chic Lounge and Grill hopes to open at 131 N. Jackson St. The location was last known as Viridarium Martini Lounge, and didn't last long. I can't imagine how this place could be much different if it follows the same motif. Chic has applied for a new Class "B" tavern and Instrumental Music license for the place.

SNOW FOUND ON MOON

The lunar landscape beneath the I-894 elevated freeway near N. Jackson St. provides a suitable terroir for one of the city's remaining piles of snow. The accumulation gets but little direct sunlight, and is well insulated by an oleagenous sandy surface of windborne particulate matter. Somebody please tell the Journal Sentinel's Jim Stingl, so he can race off and do a video about it.

Also in the Hades of our downtown freeway district, salt spray has proven fatal to most of the sumacs and all of the white pines planted in the pocket park between the River and N. Water St. just north of the St. Paul bridge. A number of pines were removed for the same reason after the 2007-2008 winter, now it's these guys' turns.
It is a rare failure in the otherwise brilliantly executed Mary Miss-designed Riverwalk, which now extends beneath the Broadway Bridge, much as it does beneath St. Paul's mighty span.
However, the walk is interrupted for about 40 feet between Fratello's and MIAD, due entirely to the intransigence of Hoffco Shoe Polish Company, owner of the undeveloped lot there. A new patch of Riverwalk is soon to open by Gary Grunau at his The Edge development, on the west bank of the upper portion of the river, just north of Lakefront Brewery. Still haven't seen anything going on with the promised walk to the south of the brewery, where Brewers Point Apartments has been a very bad neighbor, Riverwalk-wise. The City requires a riverwalk component in new riverfront developments downstream from the Humboldt Bridge.
--Michael Horne