Around the Corner Segment

This is 6th Street. This is Juneau Avenue. That is the Brewery district. This is the Deer District. These are Milwaukee's newest neighborhoods. This week we're covering two areas. One is old and one is new. And John Gertie said, let's start with the old. Not surprising, that historian. Hey, John, what are you looking at?

I'm reading, John, the timeline of Pabst history I was hired to write a couple years ago. I've written a lot of words over the years, but never in steel and never for a sidewalk. It's kind of like horizontal history here.

Let's start with the Pabst story.

It goes back to 1844. The Panama, right down here.

Good.

When Jacob Best and his four sons opened a brewery just down the block here. That's two years before Milwaukee becomes a city. So they began early and did just fine. But things really take off when Captain Frederick Pabst marries into the family and then takes over. He had really good business instincts, and on his watch, this became the largest brewery in America.

That's great.

Only 30 years after it started. So the name was changed from Best to Pabst in 1889, but there's still a B on every label to honor the family who began it.

How did Pabst do in the 20th century?

Up and down, certainly. They were one of the big three brewers in America, along with Anheuser Busch and Schlitz for more than a century. But it was never a smooth ride. Prohibition is a long detour. Things really do well after World War II. And then late 1970s, the sales curve begins to flatten the past. Family was gone by then. The company just couldn't keep up. So in 1985, it was purchased by a California investor who pretty much let it dry and closed this brewery back in 1996.

We all remember it because this area was. It was the District. And all of it was a ruin.

It really was. I can recall trees growing out of the rooftops. So that ended in 2006 when a local real estate mogul named Joe Zilber, who was nearing 90 at the time, bought the whole property as kind of a legacy gift to his hometown. He turned this into the ultimate mixed use development. So today you can live, work, play, eat, sleep, stay, work out, store your stuff and learn in this development called the Brewery.

This is the Brewery district?

Yep.

Right down the hill is the Deer District.

Let's talk about that different story, much shorter. In the late 1800s, before there were zoning laws, that area at the bottom of the hill was just A hodgepod of factories and homes and churches and saloons. Not a pretty sight. And got uglier over time. The whole area was cleared in the 1960s to make way for the Park East Freeway, which was never completed because of public opposition. That spur was so little used that it was torn out in 2002, which gave Milwaukee 26 acres of land right in the heart of town that was ripe for development, a rare opportunity. So progress was piecemeal at first. But then came the main event. Ground was broken for Pfizer forum back in 2016, which gave the Milwaukee Bucks a new home and a venue for lots of other things. That certainly was $524 million worth of construction, about half of that provided by Wisconsin taxpayers. But it gave us a new gathering space and became the nucleus of a brand new neighborhood called the Deer District, which is among the hottest in the city, especially for nightlife.

It sure feels brand new, doesn't it?

It does. Sounds like a new car. At the same time, though, John, as part of an old tradition, Milwaukee has always had gathering spaces west of the river. We built the auditorium in 1909, the arena in 1950, Bradley center in 1988. So when five served forum opened back in 2018, it really was continuing a great tradition.

So if we're talking both districts, do we have a sense of population too new to count?

Too new to count, but growing every day?

Location, location, John.

Between them, they cover about 50 acres, the northwest side of downtown between roughly 3rd Street, Interstate 43, McKinley Avenue, and down to about State Street.

I love that. What got you off your bike was to read something that you wrote.

It was kind of fun.

This whole area, John, One's renewed, one's brand new, and they're both great additions.

Thanks, John.

Thank you, John.

So I'm in the Brewery district, which is right next to the Deer district. So all week I've been calling it the Beer district. The Beer in the Deer District. Am I so wrong?

This used to be one of the research labs for Pabst.

So this is the first floor?

Yeah, this is the first floor.

Really great.

It's great. And it's open to the public. There's a performance stage, the screening room. So the history is. It really starts with my brother, John Ridley, who's a filmmaker and he's from Milwaukee. He moved to LA and went on to do great things, but always felt an affinity to Milwaukee and always wanted to do something to help uplift young talent and artistic talent. And he thought one of the great ways to do that was to be, you know, to create a facility where people could actually come together and build community and collaborate and also get support for their craft.

371 Productions. Is that what this is?

Yes.

Great.

Yep. I would say we have over 400 members and tenants. Sometimes being an artist, I think, can be a lonely experience, and you face a lot of rejection. So hence, part of the inspiration for the name of no Studios is. No. It's something that artists hear a lot and so sort of embrace that.

These are the offices of Milwaukee.

Yes.

So the members, I think, take a lot more credit for shaping those studios than me or Lisa or John do. So the fourth floor is the roof deck. Great space for hosting. This is more like private events that we have up here.

Aren't we really fortunate to have this here?

I don't see it in any other city of our size. I think John's vision was, you know, let's bring some of that spirit of supporting the arts in a really robust way here at Chiwaukee. Because you know what? We actually have amazing talent here.