News from the Valley
Thank you for joining us for a week of unique experiences in Milwaukee's Menomonee River Valley!
Valley Week featured 13 events in just one week. From a beer run, happy hour river cruise, job fair, and so much more, Valley Week highlights the many reason the Valley is a great place to visit and a great place to work.
Community and business leaders, including Potawatomi attorney general Jeff Crawford and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources secretary Preston Cole, came together Sept. 27 to celebrate the revival of the Menomonee Valley and talk about the next major projects in the neighborhood west of downtown Milwaukee. Check out the attached slideshow put together by Milwaukee Business Journal freelance photographer Jake Hill to see photos from the event.
Twenty years ago, the Menomonee River Valley was at its lowest point, executive director of the Menomonee Valley Partners Corey Zetts said.
“There were hundreds of acres of empty factories and vacant land. You wouldn’t imagine kayaking the Menomonee River, and the Hank Aaron State Trail was just a vision,” Zetts said in an email.
The Menomonee Valley Partners celebrate the revitalization of the area that houses Miller Park, the home of the Milwaukee Brewers, Potawatomi Hotel & Casino and many other local businesses with the third annual Valley Week Sept. 21-28.
For more than 100 years a company called the Milwaukee Road was one of the largest employers in the City of Milwaukee. It operated from the Menomonee River Valley, where three sculptures now sit memorializing its history. They represent the stories of thousands of workers, including a woman who overcame resistance in a male-dominated industry and became one of the first female train conductors in the Midwest.
City Lights Brewing and Third Space Brewing have partnered on a collaboration brew that will be launched on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 4:30 p.m. to kick off Valley Week, which runs Sept. 21 through 28, an annual fall celebration that showcases the ever-changing and evolving Menomonee Valley.
The Menomonee Valley used to be the forgotten area near downtown Milwaukee, often driven by Milwaukee-area residents on Interstate 94 without even a glance. But that has changed in the past two decades as evident by the major redevelopment projects that have occurred in the area just west of downtown, anchored by Miller Park, Potawatomi Hotel & Casino and the Harley-Davidson Museum.
That transformation was the topic of the Milwaukee Business Journal's Business of Growing Milwaukee event Aug. 16, which focused on the redevelopment of the area, along with significant discussion about the next major projects in the Menomonee Valley after the recent completion of the second hotel tower at Potawatomi Hotel.
