S. 27th St. plan envisioned
Wildenberg part of concept for development
The 162-year-old Italianatestyle mansion has seen better days from when it was home to one of Milwaukee’s most prominent early entrepreneurs: a whiskey baron.
What later became Wildenberg’s Evergreen Hotel might see new life as the center of a mixed-use development, including a brew pub.
The closed small hotel and its tavern, and the surrounding vacant land, where around 30 shuttered mobile homes were recently demolished, are among a group of key potential development sites on S. 27th St., between W. Morgan and W. Layton avenues.
Those five sites, along with a stretch of Wilson Creek, are featured in a new city study. Known as a “design charette,” the study’s ideas will be blended into a new S. 27th St. action plan. The Milwaukee Common Council will likely review that plan in early 2017.
The charette’s goal is to explore ideas that would add apartments, stores and restaurants within walking distance of one another. That would help transform a stretch of S. 27th St., known mainly for its big box stores and strip shopping centers.
Wilson Creek, running through the area from Wilson Park to W. Oklahoma Ave., would revert to a natural creek, with the concrete channels and culverts removed. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has a long-term goal of doing that work in roughly 10 years as part of its larger effort to reduce flooding on the Kinnickinnic River and its tributaries.
The five development sites include two locations in neighboring Greenfield, whose planning officials are working with Milwaukee’s Department of City Development on the study.
They include possible im-