UW-Milwaukee Should Build Downtown, Not On County Grounds In Wauwatosa

UW-Milwaukee, state government and the private sector are working well together to build an iconic, ground-breaking school of freshwater science in Milwaukee, perhaps on the lakefront, while boosting the visibility of UW-M's WATER Institute and the school's entire research profile.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's facilities are located nearby on the Milwaukee River and on Jones Island, expanding the scientific pool near UW-M; Marquette University, the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), a new school of public health, and other major scientific and technical private sector employers are, or will be, close by.

So why is UW-M going in the other, and wrong direction, by chasing after a site on the County Grounds in Wauwatosa on which to locate UW-M's new engineering school?

Siting the engineering school there will disconnect students and faculty from all the other educational, scientific, and academic resources in the area.

Not to mention housing, recreational and commercial opportunities and amenities - - all of which are available in downtown Milwaukee - - that are closer to Marquette, MSOE, the proposed freshwater and public health campuses, and more.

Putting the new engineering school that far from the rest of the action is akin to sprawl housing development.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close: students and faculty will have to get cars and burn fuel to drive there, and also some days to the east side campus, too; don't expect Milwaukee County to create or expand lines on its failing bus system to provide a true transit connection for an entire campus, let alone any rail service - - but the bus system already circulates through downtown Milwaukee.

This is government behavior at its most wasteful; monument builders constructing something that looks like a semi-rural picture postcard college campus on open space (the Madison Are Technical College's abandonment of a downtown campus, served by transit, for a new campus near the airport comes to mind), when every guideline in Planning 101 says build where the infrastructure, people, transit, businesses and commerce already exist.

UW-M needs to build its engineering school downtown, as some advocates are arguing convincingly.

Students, faculty, businesses and taxpayers will hail the decision for years.