Theater caps Milwaukee park’s revival

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Selig-Joseph Theater

The Selig-Joseph Theater in Milwaukee represents a departure from the ordinary both in its design and its symbolism for a neighborhood.

It’s a sign of a community’s continued commitment to reclaiming its green space.

The permanent outdoor performance shelter, complete with lighting and sound, is on the hillside of Kadish Park, a plot established through a land agreement more than a decade ago between the city and COA Youth & Family Services, an adjacent recreation and assistance organization.

Since its inception, Kadish Park had been a successful private-public partnership. From the barren land grew soccer pitches, bike paths and community gardens, all surrounded by condos, restaurants and a craft brewery.

The partnership took another step with the weekly summertime Skyline Music series, which kicked off in 2007 and has doubled annually in attendance.

“Twelve years ago, this part of the park was a neglected, litter-strewn, crime-infested area,” said Tom Schneider, COA’s executive director. “We’re talking drug dealers, prostitutes, trash … it was nasty.”

But the progress only strengthened the urge to do more.

“We saw that the next step had to go beyond pitching a tent for shows,” Schneider said, “to building a theater and continue on this path toward revitalization … of this community-led green space.”

Community support was central to the theater’s evolution. Concert attendees offered to a park committee input on the new theater’s design and sightlines, and the committee then chose between two final options that had the approval of park-goers and supporters.

On the financial side, local philanthropists covered 82 percent of the more than $230,000 project price tag, and donated services included the work of Milwaukee’s HGA Architects and Engineers.

When the design was chosen, construction crews worked from a 3-D model for the tricky task of laying the foundation and locking together radial steel on what amounts to the side of a hill. Extra machinery reviews were implemented daily for cranes and concrete pourers that were approaching the theater site from a nearly 40 degree angle.

And contractors dug trenches to keep unearthed rocks from rolling into condos, cars and cyclists below, said Joe Widmann, project manager for general contractor VJS Construction Services.

The outdoor theater’s cover, a PVC tension fabric set in an arched steel structure, required exact math to match up metal stemming from foundations placed in grades that varied by 6 to 10 feet.

“The geometry of the whole thing made it … an atypical structure,” Widmann said.

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