Photo Credit: Scott Paulus
It’s funny to think there was a time when a top goal of the Historic Third Ward Association was simply encouraging people to visit the neighborhood. “Twenty or 30 years ago it was all about, ‘Discover the Third Ward, come and find us!’” says Jim Plaisted, who took over as the organization’s executive director in July. “We used to have the jazz festival, which was all about getting a couple thousand people to come here who maybe wouldn’t have otherwise, because that used to be a concern,” Plaisted says. It’s safe to say those days are long over. The Third Ward is now one of the city’s great success stories, and one of its powerful magnets for new development. Off The Cuff spoke with Plaisted, who previously oversaw business improvement districts in Shorewood, Wauwatosa Village and Milwaukee East Side, about the Historic Third Ward Association’s vision for the booming neighborhood.
Each of the neighborhoods you’ve represented faced its own unique challenge. What is the Third Ward’s?
The challenge for the Third Ward right now is managing its growth via such vehicles as the Architectural Review Board (ARB), which is the first stop for any new development—and I can’t mention them, but there are probably one or two new ones that are coming to the floor in the next few months, via the ARB, to start their public approval process. Managing growth is a big part of the Third Ward Association’s strategic plan. When they created the new job description for the executive director, they also took a really honest look at themselves and asked, ‘Is this organization serving its members the way it has for the past 20 or 30 years?’ Because they were smart enough to realize, ‘Boy, are we different than we were 20 or 30 years ago.’ So as part of that strategic plan, we created a series of what we’re calling affinity groups, that are going to meet in the next several weeks—we just had our first one last week—and they’re in five categories of stakeholders: residents, restaurants/bars, merchants, cultural arts institutions and businesses; and office professionals.
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What’s the top concern you hear from the people you meet with?
You know, there’s general excitement about what’s going on here, both short and long term. I think there’s less concern about the next retailer to come in, or whether the next developer to come in pushes the envelope. Do we have too much national retail? Are we pricing out boutiques? Are we pricing out the arts community? Some of those concerns percolate up, but in general there’s a very positive attitude about the steps the neighborhood is taking to the future, and trusting the city, and the ARB and this organization are managing that as they have really well for the last 20 or 30 years. It’s really hard to argue the success of this organization. Through various iterations of boards and directors and turnover, it’s amazing how these guys have stayed on point and stuck to their vision for where they wanted this neighborhood to go.
The Third Ward is already one of the most densely packed neighborhoods in Milwaukee. At what point does it start turning down development proposals, or become too big for what it is?
I think it just comes down to parking. If you’re building an office or residential building that has a high parking demand, it’s going to have to park itself. What that means is if it’s a residential building, they need to have one and a half spots per unit, or something like that. And if it’s retail, they can’t rely on parking on the street. Beyond that, I think the ARB manages well whether a development fits from a massing, materials or aesthetics standpoint. So that’s not a concern: Any project that comes through this body is going to arrive in a good shape, because developers understand that the ARB holds to its guidelines.
In a decade or so, how do you imagine the Third Ward will be different from how it is today?
I would assume we would just continue to grow, both in new developments and rehabbed buildings. There’s still a handful of historic buildings that could be rehabbed. So I expect continued growth. I’m not going to throw out any numbers—how many residents, things like that—but barring a really severe economic recession this is going to continue to grow, because it does have so many great assets: the lake, the proximity to Downtown, the Public Market, the Riverwalk. It’s a one-of-a kind spot, and I think that’s why the market is responding so strongly to it. This is a neighborhood with dynamite bones, and those bones aren’t going away.
To learn more about the Historic Third Ward, visit historicthirdward.org.
