Green Bay Press Gazette, October 12, 2004

Many businesses still find downtown’s central location useful

BBy Richard Ryman and Karen Rauen
rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com, krauen@greenbaypressgazette.com

Top downtown employers

1. Government, 1,520 (county, 780; police/911, 297; state, 255; city 188)
2. WPS Resources Corp., 1,000
3. Humana Inc., 500
4. Schreiber Foods (would not release number, but it’s estimated to be among the larger employers)
5. Family Services, 300
6. Press-Gazette, 300
7. Associated Bank, 200

Downtown is not attractive to retailers, but for other businesses, it is the place to be. It’s centrally located and near financial and legal institutions. Parking is not a problem for most of the people who work there.

Trains and open drawbridges are sometimes a problem, and the lack of general-merchandise retailers certainly is, but on the whole, downtown works for workers, according to interviews with 30 downtown employers.

Kramer Rock, owner of Temployment Inc., an employment firm, said he could run his business from anywhere, but chose to remain downtown.

“Applicants will go where you are,” he said. “I could run this business in Howard, but I feel compelled to stay here, because we need a downtown of some sort.”

By Downtown Green Bay Inc.’s count, roughly 7,700 employees work downtown east of the Fox River, said Jeff Mirkes, executive director of the nonprofit group that represents the business improvement district.

There’s room for more, Mirkes said, “upwards of hundreds and hundreds of employees.”

New sites, such as the corner of East Walnut and North Washington streets, large empty sites, such as Washington Commons, and many smaller empty spaces are available.

“The signature site is Washington and Walnut. That could accommodate between 14 and 20 stories, depending on demand. That would be for the highest-grade commercial space,” he said. “There is another tier of availability throughout downtown.”

Vetter Denk Architects has proposed a mix-used office building for the Washington/ Walnut corner, as well as other development along the riverfront.

Downtown Green Bay Inc. recently looked at the average income of downtown employees. Their take-home pay exceeds the state’s median annual household income.

“We see there’s a good solid base of consumers in the downtown represented by the downtown base of employees,” he said.

Legal, financial, government and entertainment — those four segments are today’s base for downtown development, Mirkes said. He’s confident that development under way downtown will create additional jobs and that downtown-appropriate retail — specialty and service shops — will follow.

More than half of downtown’s parcels are used for commercial purposes — offices, retail, entertainment or financial services — and contribute to the business improvement district.

Rummele’s Jewelers Inc., 234 S. Adams St., has been downtown for more than 50 years and has stuck to the district despite losing its North Washington Street store to Port Plaza Mall development in the 1980s.

“We stay here because it’s centrally located,” said Tracy Alpert, Rummele’s owner. “We’re loyal to downtown Green Bay. When we needed loans, banks downtown gave us loans. We’ve developed a lot of friendships here. We just feel that it’s easy to get to. We haven’t lost business.”

Schreiber Foods, one of downtown’s largest employers, has been on Pine Street since 1978.

“It was to help centralize everybody in one location,” said Nancy Armbrust, vice president of education and community relations.

U.S. Bank occupies the same building as Schreiber.

“At the time we moved here, this was the spot, this was the prime location,” said branch manager Renee Verboncouer. “We don’t have the walk-through traffic we used to have. Otherwise, I don’t have any complaints about being downtown.”

The local Godfrey & Kahn law office is in the Regency Office Center on Main Street.

“We had been in Allouez before that. We thought, being lawyers, it was more important being near the courthouse,” said Winston Ostrow, managing partner.

Having been downtown for only 17 months, it’s still too soon to know if location has made an impact on the Green Bay Dance Studio, said Kevin Shepardson.

“The jury is still out,” he said. “We’re still hopeful. Every time someone counts us out, it seems the downtown comes through for us a little bit. It’s a nice area.”

Shepardson’s ballroom dance studio is a destination business, he said.

“We brought value downtown by bringing this dance studio,” Shepardson said. “The downtown benefits more than we do so far. We hope that we benefit as well.”

The loss of retail business downtown has created problems for some remaining businesses. James Feng, owner of China Palace on North Washington Street, said his business has lost customers.

The assessed values of commercial properties within Downtown Green Bay’s business improvement district have begun to fall. In 1999, the total value of properties assessed for the district was $128.79 million. In 2003, that number dropped to $116.29 million.

Most downtown workers interviewed for this series say they do not have problems with parking, though their customers sometimes complain. Lunch can be a problem. Don’t even think about running errands.

The closing of the Osco Drug store in Washington Commons is the most lamented loss.

“I think people would like access to a place they could pick up incidentals, those little things you could just stop and pick up over your lunch hour,” Armbrust said.

Jim Wilson, owner of Caffé Espresso, 119 S. Washington Street, has been downtown for 21 years.

“I don’t think it’s quite as pedestrian-friendly as I think it should be,” Wilson said.

Wilson gives parking tokens to customers to relieve their anxiety over one of the biggest complaints about downtown, complaints that most downtown businesses say are exaggerated.

“People don’t like to walk,” said Jim Rivett of Arketype Inc., 126 Pine St. “It’s a suburban mentality. It’s a hard one to try and solve.”
There are doubters — those who say downtown housing will never sell. “There is not enough down there to invite people to live there,” said Pat Richardson of Green Bay. “We don’t need more living space downtown. I think the men who are doing the planning are wishful thinkers.

“They need more than eating places and a couple of entertainment places to get people to move downtown.”

That sort of thinking doesn’t deter John Vetter, one of the “men who are doing the planning” for a more than $60 million riverfront revitalization that includes condominiums, mixed-use office buildings and public access to the river.

Vetter Denk Architects of Milwaukee hopes to build a 26-unit condominium complex behind the 200 block of North Washington Street, where the Fox River Parking Ramp once stood.

Vetter believes that once people live downtown, more businesses will follow.

“The problem with Green Bay is it never understood you need the people for the viability,” he said. Although city officials have long talked about identity and vitality, the focus has been on bringing in retail. “You need to bring in people first.”

He’s seen it happen.

Vetter Denk’s Beerline developments have raised the bar for condominium development in Milwaukee, he said.

“This was our starting point and stepping stone,” Vetter said, standing at the firm’s downtown Milwaukee studio and looking over models of the first Beerline project.

John Vetter and Kelly Denk founded their firm in 1985. Their Broadway studio occupies the third and fourth floors of a 150-year-old building.

Hardwood floors stretch virtually uninterrupted the length of the building — an open, loft-style concept. Models and hanging displays create a three-dimensional résumé of the firm’s award-winning work.

“The market was just crying out,” he said.

The Beerline projects — which began with housing, then included a more community-minded development for the Milwaukee Rowing Club — have won recognition from the American Institute of Architects Wisconsin Chapter.

As the housing developed, retail followed.

“It informed the other developers’ thinking dramatically. The lifestyle image we created five years ago is the status quo now. We want to raise the quality of life.”

Green Bay officials also are striving to raise the bar for downtown housing. Planners know downtown needs more people making it their home.

A simple Internet search with the phrase “downtown living” finds cities nationwide trying to draw residents to the city center. Downtown living has tended to start small in cities, but catches on, said Dave Feehan, president of the International Downtown Association.

“All Green Bay has to do is enjoy an urban housing boom, and you will have an activated downtown like you wouldn’t believe,” Vetter said.

In 2000, 540 people called downtown home, according to the U.S. Census. Of those, only a handful owned their homes.

Tim and Sandy Glynn added to the number of urban dwellers last year when the couple moved to Green Bay’s Washington Square Apartments.

“We wanted to get downtown,” Tim Glynn said. “We wanted to be close to things.”

They managed that.

Glynn walks to his job at the Regency Suites hotel, the bank, dentist and library. He and his wife walk to restaurants and occasionally local bars.

The couple lives easily with one car, which Sandy Glynn uses to get to her job in Bellevue.

Having lived in a handful of other urban areas, Glynn said he can see that Green Bay’s downtown has a “ways to go.”

“The city planning years ago just didn’t seem like they had a lot of foresight,” Glynn said. “If they just would have investigated other cities … I know other cities made the same mistakes that they did.”

He, like many, hopes to see the riverfront enhanced.

“If you look at other cities that had a river running through it, that’s what really helped them,” he said.

Green Bay is aiming more for an urban feel than a magic number of residents.

“You’re going to sense it. You’re going to feel it when you’re on the street and there are people there,” said Rob Strong, Green Bay’s planning director. “There are things going on in the evening where people are walking to them; they’re not all driving downtown. There’s just an urban lifestyle that’s now alive.

“I do want to start to see the street life, people who live and work here and walk on the sidewalks.”

Strong and Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt talk about attracting a “creative class” of people to the city core.

“Downtowns are a perfect environment for those types of people if you provide the settings that they like, places where they can meet and spend time with other creative people,” Strong said.

But for more people to live downtown, city planners recognize it needs to offer a grocery store, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner.

The city’s Downtown Design Plan pegs the southeast corner of Monroe Avenue and Main Street, where the Body Shop now stands, as a “neighborhood commercial node,” where a small grocery store or pharmacy might locate.

“We’ve known all along that you need to have that element if you’re going to support the residential,” Strong said. “The businesses aren’t going to come here until they’ve got ‘the rooftops,’ as we say, or in this case, the unit counts. And it’s tough to get the people down here, knowing that the services are so far away. It’s going to have to go somewhat hand in hand.”

The city has tried to bring drug and grocery stores downtown, but the retailers haven’t bitten, Strong said.

“You’ve got to find the businesses that understand the urban environment and start to realize that there is value in these walk-in customers,” he said.

The city faces inherent challenges in attracting people to live downtown, said Ray Hutchison, head of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Urban and Regional Studies department.

Some people perceive downtown as unsafe. “While those are not accurate perceptions, it’s a reality that some people view downtown as that,” he said.

And people have to want the lifestyle.

“Are people in Green Bay going to buy this idea of living downtown?” Hutchison said.

Vetter Denk’s work in Green Bay is in part educational, Vetter said. The condominium project will be the city’s first truly urban housing option, he said.

It’s difficult for Green Bay residents to judge whether the condominiums will succeed.

“How would you know if it doesn’t exist?” Vetter said. “Go to Denver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis — this is how it’s all happening. Literally, this will set the tone. The buying public can only react to what’s available.” tion, the two properties will be valued at $5.07 million and $1.28 million respectively.

More is in the works. If Milwaukee-based Vetter Denk Architects’ plan for the riverfront gets off the ground, it could add $60 million to $95 million of value to a three-block area between the Walnut Street and Ray Nitschke Memorial bridges.

Print Page