Green Bay Press Gazette, October 14, 2004
Leaders foresee change, opportunity for city center
By Karen Rauen
krauen@greenbaypressgazette.com
Special report
Click here for the Press-Gazette’s special report on downtown Green Bay, including stories, photo galleries, graphics and comments from readers like you.
Defining downtown
There are no finite boundaries to downtown Green Bay. It is not uncommon or incorrect to include the On Broadway and Olde Main districts in a definition of downtown — both have downtown characteristics.
We chose to focus on the downtown area that makes up Downtown Green Bay Inc.’s business district boundaries. While Broadway has reinvented itself in recent years, downtown’s east side struggles to be recognized as viable. When Green Bay-area residents talk of a troubled downtown, they are talking about this core district.
Get more
• Have ideas about what would make downtown better? E-mail us at krauen@greenbaypressgazette.com and rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com.
• Join the discussion. Attend a forum about downtown’s future
and make your voice heard: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20, in the auditorium
of the Brown County Central Library, 515 Pine St.
A crane stands tall over downtown Green Bay’s skyline, a sign that
construction is under way at the southwest corner of North Washington
and Cherry streets. Posted front and center on the old Boston Store building,
a rendering shows the brick-and-glass facade Baylake Bank has in store
for the former big-box retail site. In the Cherry Street Parking Lot,
construction crews are gearing up to build a 795-stall, $10 million parking
ramp.
The pulse quickens in the heart of the city.
“It’s nice to look out the window and see a crane,” said Green Bay Planning Director Rob Strong, referencing the work being done on the Nicolet National Bank building.
From the sixth floor of City Hall, where his department is located, Strong can keep an eye on downtown. And when he does, he sees symbols of development — finally.
He’d like to see more.
“I’m convinced that this downtown is going to be a different downtown five to 10 years from now,” Strong said.
He’s also certain that Green Bay is staring opportunity in the face — poised to make significant changes to its riverfront. To do so, city officials, the community and business leaders have to make a commitment to the city center, he said.
“This is a defining moment for our downtown,” he said, speaking primarily of the recently unveiled plan for redeveloping the riverfront between the Walnut Street and Ray Nitschke Memorial bridges. “We’ve got a treasure between those two bridges. This is an opportunity to really make a statement about our community.”
Late last month, Milwaukee-based Vetter Denk Architects and Boston-based landscape architect StoSS unveiled their vision for the downtown riverfront between the bridges.
Their plan is different from anything the city has seen in recent history.
“I’ve worked in this community for 24 years … and this is probably the most exciting information I’ve ever brought to anyone,” Strong told the city’s Redevelopment Authority when the two companies’ principals, John Vetter and Chris Reed, pitched their concept.
Strong and Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt will bring the vision to the Green Bay City Council on Tuesday.
The plan aims to bring people back to the Fox River by extending piers out over the water — with room for public gatherings — and adding transient docks to welcome boaters.
On the west side of the river, Reed talked about creating a softer image with enhancements to the water’s edge and additional plantings. The plan also calls for building tax base along the river to the tune of $60 million to $95 million worth of condominium, hotel, retail and office development. Farther east, it recommends reclaiming the city’s street grid.
But how do you get the pretty pictures off the page and onto the river’s edge?
Feel the excitement
Opening up the waterfront
City officials have to “sell the vision,” Strong said.
If the city knows what it wants, it needs to use that vision as a marketing tool. “This is what you’re buying into,” he said.
The Vetter Denk/StoSS downtown plan has been before many of Green Bay’s top companies in a bid for corporate support.
Excitement is building among some corporate leaders.
“When you say we are going to do something between the two bridges, we are going to do something on both sides of the river, that speaks to the history of Green Bay,” said Tom Meinz, executive vice president-public affairs for WPS Resources Corp., downtown’s largest private-sector employer. “I really like the idea of opening up the waterfront.”
The city is encouraging Green Bay corporate residents to be part of the downtown.
Make it make cents
Market must support project
Philanthropy doesn’t pay the bills. If a developer is going to invest in downtown, the move has to make good business sense, Strong said.
The market must support a project. Projects fail to come to fruition most often, because a developer can’t get tenants or buyers, he said.
Among Vetter Denk’s proposals is a mixed-use building that could stretch 20 stories.
“We’re going to work our tails off to fill that building,” Strong said.
Green Bay officials can help by creating an environment downtown that lessens the risk, Strong said.
Knowing the plan for neighboring properties is part of that.
City commitment
There has been success in the past
Many projects fall on city-owned or Redevelopment Authority-owned land or in areas that qualify for funding through a tax-increment finance district.
That means, at some point, the city’s Redevelopment Authority and City Council have to get behind an idea.
“We have been very successful in doing many, many projects in this community,” Strong said. “This council, when they see a good, quality product, will support us on it.”
The Redevelopment Authority and city may have to approve agreements with developers outlining financing, a timetable and any other key project benchmarks.
Make it happen
People must be willing to take a risk
Still, many projects don’t make it off the page.
Flip through the city’s 1997 Downtown Design Plan and you see projects that never materialized: an open-air market south of Riverwalk Plaza on South Washington Street, a transit facility at East Walnut Street and Monroe Avenue, a hotel at South Madison and Main streets.
With public projects, funding is often the biggest hurdle. The private-sector projects — hotels, office complexes, condominiums — depend on the market.
“Is there a group of people willing to take the risk?” Strong said.
Those who are building downtown say city leaders understand development.
“Schmitt gets it,” said Jeff Weyers of Commercial Horizons. “He understands Green Bay is in competition with the suburbs.
“If we didn’t see passion in the mayor’s office, we wouldn’t have made a big bet on the bank building.”
Commercial Horizons is developing the Nicolet National Bank building and moving its offices downtown from Howard.
“It is the place to be,” Weyers said. “We’ve had our offices downtown before, and we like being able to walk out the door and pick which restaurant to go to.”
Strong doesn’t mind admitting where work is needed.
He recognizes that the city needs to take better advantage of the river, to provide a cross-section of housing types downtown and to retain existing businesses.
“I don’t expect every citizen in the city of Green Bay and Brown County to want to come downtown every day,” Strong said.
“But I’d like to believe that there are things that bring them down here other than just Fourth of July, that we have more things that are of interest and of value to this community that people do want to come down and spend some time downtown.”
That sense of communitywide pride is critical to downtown’s future, said Jeff Mirkes, executive director of Downtown Green Bay Inc., the nonprofit group that represents the business improvement district.
“If downtown were dead and … every special event here would have headed for higher ground, I think development and the community would believe that downtown was really on a respirator,” Mirkes said.
“I truly believe that this is a downtown in a transition.”
A transition that’s being laid one plan, one brick at a time.
The heart still beats. 
