Milwaukee residents debate pedestrian-friendly plans for Brady Street amid reckless driving concerns

More than one hundred Brady Street area residents gathered Tuesday to discuss the Brady Street Business Improvement District (BID) study at the St. Hedwig Three Women Holy Parish in Milwaukee. The study’s objective is to make the busy East Side street more pedestrian friendly. From the back and forth between city officials and residents, it was clear that plans to shut down Brady Street from general traffic would not go without pushback from some community members.

Brady Street BID released a study early Tuesday morning conducted by GRAEF and The Kubala Washatko Architects displaying four options to make Brady Street more pedestrian friendly. Two involve allowing all general traffic to move through the street with three intersection improvements for those on bikes and on foot, while two more would bar most vehicle traffic ranging from two to four blocks.

According to multiple sources, several people were killed late last year during hit-and-run incidents between September and October of 2022. In late May, a 41-year-old man was seriously injured after being struck by an SUV in a separate hit-and-run.

By show of hands many residents supported the option to pedestrianize the corridor, but many asked questions about the potential project impact on local business, parking and crime.

When answering questions from residents, Alderperson Jonathan Brostoff, who represents the third district including Brady Street, said he wanted to make the Lower East Side a “neighborhood first” and shift away from the status quo of nightlife business. After the fatalities of last year, there wasn’t room for a “half-cocked idea,” he added.

“(The study) was done because we had three vehicular killings in one month. I got the feedback loud and clear people are fed up with it. We didn’t want to go half-cocked with the idea,” Brostoff explained, noting he wanted the expertise from the engineering and architecture firms.

The four design concepts were preliminary and required community input, Craig Huebner, an urban planner for GRAEF, told the audience. “This is not final design, these are solutions for the BID to carry out to have conversations with you and the community,” he added.

As previously reported by The Daily Reporter, study showed plans for enhanced intersections between Franklin Place and Warren Avenue, an “enhanced corridor” between Humboldt and Cambridge Avenues, a people-only corridor between Franklin and Warren and a fully pedestrianized corridor between Humboldt and Cambridge.

Concepts one and two were “slow and safe” options with curbless streets and bollards to act as a barrier between pedestrians and traffic, keeping drivers aware of people on the sidewalk at level, Huebner said. The study took inspiration from State Street in Wauwatosa for the curbless street design, he added.

Alternatives three and four were “people only solutions,” Huebner noted. The streets would only allow buses and transit, delivery and emergency vehicles. The alternatives range from Franklin Place to Warren Avenue, and Humboldt and Farwell Avenues.

The BID and its partners will need to secure funds before it can implement any options, City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works City Engineer Kevin Muhs said, at the town hall. From there, it will take one to two years to solidify the design and construction time will depend on which concept is chosen, he added.

If the neighborhood chooses a concept to change the surface of the road, such as flattening six-inch curbs for example, it could take several years to construct, Muhs added.

“I want to know in the next 30 days, what is going to change on our street?” One resident remarked during the town hall.

The city will improve crosswalks on Franklin Place to be more visible and introduce a temporary median between intersections of Brady Street and Arlington Place, Muhs said.

Some residents pointed out some crosswalk paint and accommodations weren’t visible to drivers. Others pointed out the limited parking in the neighborhood.

“With options three and four, which I support, my fellow resident has a solid concern. Parking will be an issue with both of those options. Has any research been done into potential sites for additional parking structures?” another resident asked.

The BID was looking into a parking site on the Farwell Avenue side of Brady Street, Brostoff said. Later in the meeting, he said the surface level parking lot on the intersection with Van Buren Avenue would also be a “justified” parking area.

“We’ve had conversations with some people talking here today about the Farwell-Brady side of Brady Street, talking about that area that which currently holds the St. John’s parking being built up to a parking structure that can be a destination where people from out-of-town park there and walk the street. The second option, we have currently a lot of underutilized parking behind the Walgreens,” the alderman said.

According to the study, around 10,000 cars pass through Brady Street on a daily basis. Residents expressed concern about those cars trickling into nearby neighborhoods if the fourth option was picked.

Nearby corridors such as Ogden Avenue and North Avenue were better suited for car traffic, Brostoff said. Those cars didn’t all start or stop in Brady Street and included commuters coming from Shorewood getting downtown for example who would take other routes instead, Alex Motl, an engineer for GRAEF and local resident, added.

Many businesses further west on Brady Street rely on car traffic that passes through, the owner of a liquor store said at the town hall. He asked if the city could instead add speed bumps or close part of the street like Water Street on weekends.

Brady Street and the east side neighborhood are no strangers to closing down streets to encourage pedestrian foot traffic; in May, the city opened a pedestrian plaza on Ivanhoe Place in the Upper East Side neighborhood. The area in front of Nomad World Pub at the intersection of Brady and Warren Avenue has also been closed to cars for the last several years.

There will be more opportunities for community input before making final long-term decisions, Brostoff told The Daily Reporter. Planning for the plaza at Ivanhoe took 14 years, according to the alderman.