News from the Valley
The largest single site of industrial contamination in Wisconsin has been certified by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as cleaned up.
The 110-acre brownfield was where the Milwaukee Road Shops stretched out as a sprawling complex of industry dedicated to producing and repairing rail cars and locomotives. In the beginning of the 20th century as many as 3,000 workers labored away at the shops on the rail cars that carried freight and passengers around the country.
Rite-Hite, a family-owned company with over 2,200 employees worldwide, makes loading dock equipment, industrial doors, safety barriers and other items.
On March 4, Menomonee Valley Partners partnered with Bradley Tech to bring 20 high school students to tour manufacturing facilities at Charter Wire and Taylor Dynamometer. Students were impressed to see the modern manufacturing sites, learn from professionals in the field, and asked great questions about how people started working in that field. A few were especially excited to learn more about welding jobs!
On March 11, young women from local high schools, Milwaukee Academy of Science and Cross Trainers Academy, not only had the opportunity to tour Rexnord Corporation, but spent their school day learning about a wide variety of STEM careers directly from women who are currently practicing in those fields. Students sat one-on-one with their women mentors to learn what a day on the job is like for a civil engineer, mechanical engineer, safety engineer, architectural engineer, and even a chemist and how these roles fit into the process of manufacturing and engineering. Thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers from Rexnord, Komatsu Mining Corp, Ingeteam, Materion, Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and Zimmerman Architects who spoke with our students!
A big thank you to the companies for hosting students as well as the funders of the Career Discovery Initiative, including Bader Philanthropies!
Plans to add more Amtrak trips between Milwaukee and Chicago are getting a boost from improvements coming to a Menomonee Valley rail yard. The Muskego Yard improvements will create a route for Canadian Pacific's freight trains to bypass the railroad's mainline tracks that run through the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, which also serves Amtrak passenger trains. This will also decrease traffic delays at railroad crossings near the Intermodal, both at 2nd and 13th streets.
Lake Effect Bonnie North speaks with John Shannon, founder of Milwaukee’s Guardian Fine Art Services.
While many of us will never own a Picasso or a Rembrandt, we probably have collections of artworks or objects that are valuable to us. Most of us also have family papers and photographs that have sentimental value — and we might even own a piece or two of antique furniture. How we handle and store these items can keep them safe for future generations or allow them to deteriorate and become trash.
John Shannon, founder of Milwaukee’s Guardian Fine Art Services, wants to make sure your valuables, whatever they are, survive and retain their value. The storage facility handles tangible items like art, antiques, arms, heirlooms and more. Items are stored at museum level standards.
When Third Space opened in 2016, they had a 2,400-barrel capacity. In 2020, they will have 12,000-barrel capacity. From taking a risk with a larger than usual craft system for a brewery to their intense focus on quality to their target of being a production brewery, Third Space has made tremendous strides in a little more than three years that they’ve been in business. The brewery currently employs 14 full-time and 14 part-time employees, and they are looking to add four full-time staff and at least three more part-time staff. Congrats to Third Space!
…as one of that state’s largest minority-owned and -operated businesses, Potawatomi Hotel & Casino has entertained millions of guests, helped transform the city’s Menomonee Valley into a thriving business corridor, created opportunity for thousands of employees and has consistently given back to the community.
There are so many art- and design-focused businesses here now that the strip has been rebranded the West St. Paul Avenue Design District.
And one of the leading lights in the district is Guardian Fine Art Services, which – along with its own The Warehouse art museum, which shows pieces from the owners' own collection of around 5,000 works – occupies a nearly 100-year-old five-story building at 1635 W. St. Paul Ave.
The anchor has been raised to begin a long voyage to cleaning Milwaukee area rivers that connect to Lake Michigan.
On Tuesday, officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Milwaukee County, City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, We Energies and the Environmental Protection Agency announced an agreement to commit funds to cleaning parts of the Milwaukee estuary and area rivers.
There have been a lot of developments in downtown Milwaukee over the last decade, but developments have also taken place in other areas of the city. Daykin points to the Menomonee River Valley as an area that has seen significant redevelopment, which largely includes commercial and manufacturing buildings.
