Excellent Letter To The Editor About UW-M Research Park

Keep it in Milwaukee.

That's the conclusion of Steve Filmanowicz, a former colleague of mine in Mayor John Norquist's office, and now communications director at the Congress for the New Urbanism, about where UW-M should put its proposed research park.

Here's his June 11, 2007 letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

UWM

Put new engineering campus downtown

It's hard to imagine a better kick-off for the Milwaukee 7 partnership's plans to recharge our regional economy around technology-based manufacturing and process design than building the new engineering school and research park proposed by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ("UWM to raise money for land," June 7).

But instead of the fields of the County Grounds, imagine the new campus joining Manpower's new headquarters downtown and serving as a gateway to the redeveloping Park East corridor.

With the Milwaukee School of Engineering just blocks away and the neighboring Milwaukee Area Technical College serving as a partner in training workers for highly skilled manufacturing jobs, UWM's new Innovation Park would be the centerpiece of Milwaukee's new "knowledge corridor."

Although there's plenty of available land in the Park East corridor, particularly west of the river, the campus would need to be reconceived in a more vertical form, with incubators and spin-off businesses taking advantage of the neighborhood's impressive talent base by locating in nearby lofts and mixed-use buildings.

Instead of asking "what if?" as we do now after having built Miller Park in a fairly isolated location, let's fully explore the benefits of better integrating UWM's new Innovation Park into the life and economy of the city.

Stephen Filmanowicz
Communications director
Congress for the New Urbanism
Milwaukee