steinbring

From the Article:

It's been miserably cold in Wisconsin this week, but just how cold has it gotten?

Here are the coldest temperatures recorded during the Arctic blast hitting the area over the last week.

The lowest air temperatures seen across Wisconsin over this cold spell were around minus 5 to minus 15 with those temperatures scattered throughout the state, according National Weather Service meteorologist John Gagan. These temperatures were recorded Sunday night into Monday morning.

There were cases of minus 15 seen across the state, but primarily in the southwest and west of Madison in areas like Mineral Point and Monroe.

From the Article:

After a frigidly cold week in Milwaukee, temperatures are expected to warm back up early next week. Highs are expected to be in the low 20s on Sunday as warm air comes up out of the south, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures will climb into the low to mid 30s on Monday and by Tuesday will push the mid to upper 30s. That means Milwaukee could see snow melt as early as Monday, depending on how warm temperatures get during the day. Chances of rain on Tuesday will continue the widespread snowmelt into the rest of the week, said National Weather Service meteorologist Taylor Patterson.

Cold temps transitioning into warmer weather early next week could also lead to foggy conditions in Milwaukee, said Patterson.

Average temps in Milwaukee during January are around freezing. "For roughly one week, it's been much colder than normal, and next week it'll actually be warmer than normal. We've moving from one extreme to the other," said Patterson.

Before then though, Milwaukee will get at least one more round of snow. Forecasts call for 2 to 3 inches of powder to drop starting Thursday evening.

From the Article:

Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate cited decisions by a utility regulator that have made it easier for some customers to afford their utility bills and install rooftop solar projects among the reasons for firing him this week.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 21-11 to reject Tyler Huebner’s appointment to the Public Service Commission. Huebner, an appointee of Gov. Tony Evers, had been serving since 2020. He’s the governor’s 10th appointee to be rejected by GOP senators. In a separate vote, they confirmed Evers’ appointee, Summer Strand, to the commission in a 27-5 vote.

Democrats said the move was tied to “partisan political games.” But Republicans, like Sen. Julian Bradley, R-Franklin, accused Huebner of using his position as an activist and acting beyond his authority under state law.

“Their job is to be regulators, not policymakers,” Bradley said.

In a statement on his firing, Huebner said he’s proud of the decisions he made “to balance safety, reliability and affordability” in the services provided by utilities.

From the Article:

At the Urban Ecology Center‘s Riverside Park campus, the development of a new event venue is only the nucleus of a project that will also improve trail and parkland access on the grounds surrounding it.

The Urban Ecology Center (UEC) plans to redevelop a large Cream City brick warehouse at its Riverside Park headquarters, 1500 E. Park Pl., into a 300-person event space, as Urban Milwaukee previously reported. But the project will also involve constructing a new connection to the Oak Leaf Trail and accessible green space, including a new water feature.

The outdoor, recreational elements of the project are focused on a portion of the campus UEC staff call the East Gateway. It is a patch of undeveloped land between the Oak Leaf Trail and the future event space. All that stands there now is the husk of a former building.

“It’s a derelict three walls, right,” said Marcos Guevara, Director of Strategy & Operations for Community Engagement. “It isn’t even a full building.”

What’s left of the structure will be taken down, and 70 feet of trail will be constructed, connecting E. Park Place and the offshoot of Milwaukee County Parks‘ Oak Leaf Trail that lattices the forested area of Riverside Park.

“So because our mission is to connect people to nature and each other, opening up more ways for people to access a park is really exciting,” Guevera said.

From the Article:

Nearly 20 years ago, the Grohmann Museum at MSOE opened it doors to share art in all mediums that celebrated, explored or captured humans at work – from harvesting wheat to brewing beer to building railroads to forging steel and beyond.

Now, after dozens of exhibitions and an ever-growing collection of art inspired by industry, the Grohmann Museum hosts what just may be the perfect intersection of art and industry.

“Patterns of Meaning: The Art of Industry by Cory Bonnet,” which opens on Friday, Jan. 19 at the museum, 1000 N. Broadway, focuses on work by Pittsburgh artist Cory Bonnet, who not only draws inspiration from the steel industry, but uses remnants of that industry as his canvas.

Bonnet paints on material salvaged from moribund steel mills in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio – forms and patterns and rollers and all sorts of vintage, often-hulking objects. Bonnet's New Vision Studio collaborators use the objects to create glass artwork, ceramics, furniture and other artwork, too.

“I was a traditional oil painter,” says Bonnet, who studied animation in college while working in machine shops and waiting tables. After graduation, he worked in a specialty building supply company that specialized in wood and wood coatings. When his employer asked if he’d like to learn more about LEED sustainability, he jumped at the opportunity.

From the Article:

A judge who has been presiding over the Northridge Mall demolition order lawsuit since early 2022 again asked for more urgency from the city and the property's owner toward tearing down the vacant building.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge William Sosnay during a Wednesday hearing asked for the process to move “quickly, efficiently and effectively.” That was after city attorneys presented their strategy to take the property through tax foreclosure by the end of this month, and begin the process of demolishing it by this summer. Milwaukee officials announced that effort this month after receiving a $15 million grant from the state to pay for the mall’s demolition.

“It seems more things have transpired over the last three months than have occurred over the last 15 years,” Sosnay said.

Under an estimated timeline shown to aldermen this month, the mall’s demolition would be complete in fall 2025.

“You’re not on the same schedule I am,” Sosnay said Wednesday.

Sosnay in October 2022 upheld the city’s demolition order against Northridge, and since then has been pushing both the city and its private owner to prepare demolition plans for the building. The mall has been vacant for 20 years and has belonged to Chinese investor U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group Inc. since 2008.

An appeal by U.S. Black Spruce has stymied the effort to enforce the demolition order.

That could change as early as Jan. 25 when a different Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge could act upon the city’s request to take ownership of Northridge Mall through a tax foreclosure. The city filings tally $649,426 in unpaid property taxes from 2018 through 2021 on the U.S. Black Spruce properties.

U.S. Black Spruce attorney Christopher Kloth on Wednesday said he had “nothing to inform the court” regarding the company’s future plans. He is not involved in the appeal of the demolition order, or the foreclosure case.

The demolition would take more than a year to complete because of the utilities on the site, and the need to abate hazardous materials from the building structure, according to a Jan. 10 letter from assistant city attorney Theresa Montag to Sosnay. The city will create a website updating the public on those efforts, according to the letter.

By the end of the project, the city would have a cleared, graded site serving as a blank slate for a new use. The city of Milwaukee owns the vacant Boston Store building connected to Northridge Mall, and plans to start its demolition by early February.

According to Montag’s letter, U.S. Black Spruce has not put security measures in place at Northridge, and there is evidence of break-ins and guns being fired in the building. A report by city building inspectors for the week leading up to Dec. 24 said half of the property is not fenced, and that a contractor hired by the city is securing open entrances into the mall itself.

U.S. Black Spruce is tallying a $2,000 daily fine for not security the property under a 2022 order by Sosnay.

The city is prepared to secure the building “immediately” if it is given ownership to the property this month, according to Milwaukee assistant city attorney Michael Radavich.

From the Article:

Sinabro, which will bring a menu of Korean appetizers, sides and noodle dishes, is slated to open inside the Landmark Building at 316 N. Milwaukee St. The space, which was most recently home to Fool’s Errand and Fauntleroy, has been empty since July of 2022.

Behind the concept is Han Kim, an aspiring restaurateur who grew up working in his parents’ restaurants in Rhode Island. For a few years, he stepped away from the family business to attend business school and pursue a career in technology. But two years ago, he says, he decided to join his family here in Milwaukee.

His parents, Hae Jeong Kim and Jongsoo Kim, founded Kanpai Izakaya in 2016, and his family owns Char’d, the modern Korean restaurant in the Third Ward and Maru Korean Bistro on Prospect Avenue. His father is a co-owner and investor in Sinabro.

Kim, who is currently operating Char’d alongside his sister, Minjee Kim, says the concept for Sinabro was inspired by the gaps in the food scene that he noted when moved from the East Coast to Milwaukee.

“One of the first things that I noticed is that there really aren’t any great Korean noodle options here,” Kim notes. “Milwaukee is this great city, and I feel like Downtown is growing and heading in a great direction. But there’s also so much opportunity.”

From the Article:

Wisconsin’s population is holding steady, with modest gains attributed to immigration and people moving from other states.

According to data released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau, the state saw an estimated gain of 20,412 people between July 2022 and July 2023.

Wisconsin’s population is now estimated to be nearly 5.9 million people — a jump of about 1 percent since the last census was taken in April 2020.

So far this decade, the state has experienced about a quarter of the population growth it saw between 2010 and 2020. But the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in deaths that altered the state’s trajectory, said David Egan-Robertson, demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.

“It actually may be a case that population will grow a little bit faster because there will be fewer deaths going forward in the state,” Egan-Robertson said.

During the period covered by the most recent estimates, there were 1,147 more births than deaths. That’s a change from recent years when there were more deaths than births.

Still, most of the state’s population growth has come from immigration, or from domestic migration. An estimated 13,653 people came to Wisconsin from other countries. Another 5,648 moved from another state.

“We’re not Texas, we’re not Florida or any of the other southern states that might be growing quite a bit,” Egan-Robertson said. “(Wisconsin’s) growth is pretty moderate and it’s in the positive direction.”

Mark Sommerhauser is the communications director and policy researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum. He said Wisconsin’s estimated growth was smaller than what most states saw in the same time period, but it’s still a positive sign.

“Given the sort of trajectory of population growth that we have seen in the last decade or two, that’s actually a decent annual number,” Sommerhauser said. “It’s higher than most of the years that I’ve looked at since 2010.”

John Johnson agreed. A research fellow at the Marquette University Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, Johnson said any net gain from other states is an encouraging sign.

“Whether or not more people are moving to our state or leaving our state is a sign of how satisfied people are with the quality of life that we’re providing. So I think that is an important indicator. And we do see positive net migration to Wisconsin overall,” Johnson said.

Other states are faring worse, Johnson said.

“Milwaukee is predicted to have the same number of congressional districts at the end of this decade as they did at the beginning,” he said, after having lost a seat after the 2000 census. That’s in contrast to cities such as San Francisco, which is on track to lose representation.

From the Article:

Wisconsin's powerful Republican Assembly leader said Tuesday that he hopes the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court adopts new constitutional legislative boundary maps, even as he slammed proposals from Democrats as “a political gerrymander” and threatened an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court tossed Republican-drawn maps, long considered among the country's most favorable to the GOP, and ordered new maps that do not favor one party over another. It said if the Legislature doesn't adopt maps, the court will.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Republicans have approached Democrats about passing new maps in the Legislature, but “we have not gotten a warm reception to that idea.”

“We are ready, willing and able to try to engage in that process,” Vos said at a news conference.

Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer questioned Vos' sincerity.

“We are always open to conversations with our colleagues, but have yet to be convinced that Republican Legislators are serious about passing a fair and representative map, especially given the extreme gerrymander they submitted to the court on Friday," she said in a statement.

Wisconsin is a purple state, with four of the past six presidential elections decided by less than a percentage point. But under legislative maps first enacted by Republicans in 2011 and then again in 2022 with few changes, the GOP has grown its majorities to 64-35 in the Assembly and 22-11 in the state Senate.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the maps passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021, leading the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court to adopt the maps that are currently in use. The court has since shifted to liberal control, and it threw out the maps last month.

In a 4-3 ruling, the high court said the current maps were unconstitutional because not all districts were comprised of a contiguous territory. Some districts included areas that weren't connected to the whole.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers, along with Evers, a conservative Wisconsin law firm, a liberal law firm that brought the redistricting lawsuit, a group of mathematics professors and a redistricting consultant submitted new proposed maps on Friday.

The map submitted by Republicans would maintain the current 64-35 GOP majority, while other maps would narrow it to as little as a one-seat Republican edge, according to an analysis by Marquette University Law School research fellow John D. Johnson

Vos dismissed the maps submitted by Democrats, saying they would move too many boundary lines and force incumbent lawmakers to run against one another. He called them “nothing more than a political gerrymander.”

In the 2022 election, Wisconsin’s Assembly districts had the nation’s second-largest Republican tilt behind only West Virginia, according to an Associated Press statistical analysis that was designed to detect potential gerrymandering. Republicans received less than 55% of the votes cast for major party Assembly candidates, yet they won 65% of the seats.

The submitted maps are being reviewed now by two consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They will submit their report by Feb. 1, which will include their recommended maps.

“My hope is that the court, in any fair reading, rejects the maps that were submitted which have large partisan bias and either has maps drawn by the professors, if they go that route, or ultimately we'll have to go to the (U.S.) Supreme Court and demonstrate the huge political nature of what they’ve done, ” Vos said.

When asked when such an appeal would be filed or what it would argue, Vos declined to say.

“Our goal is not to rush to the U.S. Supreme Court," Vos said. “We want to try and have a map that meets the constitution."

Republicans have indicated that they would argue that there were due process violations. Vos has also suggested that the appeal would argue that liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who called the current maps “rigged” and “unfair” during her run for office, should not have heard the case. She sided with the three other liberal justices in ordering new maps.

From the Article:

Milwaukee County is looking for public input on an extension of the Oak Leaf Trail through Bender Park in Oak Creek.

A meeting will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. Jan. 17, at the Lake Vista Park Pavilion, 4159 Lake Vista Parkway in Oak Creek to allow residents to express their feedback on the proposed designs for the asphalt multi-use trail.

The 1.3-mile extension will “close a key gap in the regional trail network creating a 20-mile continuous bike facility between and through Milwaukee and Racine counties,” according to Milwaukee County Parks.

Oak Creek Mayor Dan Bukiewicz said this will be a great addition for Oak Creek.

“We currently have a vast network of trails in the city and this latest extension provides even greater connectivity for people to explore parts of Oak Creek,” he said. “With the development of Lake Vista, and in the near future its northern addition as well as the residential development, it could not have come at a better time.”

From the Article:

One in 10 Wisconsin teenagers has attempted suicide over the last three years. More than one-third of high schoolers feel sad or hopeless. Half of Wisconsin youth have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety or behavioral problems.

At the same time, half of Wisconsin's youth say they have difficulty obtaining mental health services and half of children aged 3 to 17 with mental health conditions received no treatment.

These are just some of the deep concerns raised by the Wisconsin Office of Children's Mental Health, a state agency within the Department of Health Service, which met with state legislators, stakeholders and members of the media Friday morning. The data are part of the latest annual report from the state agency, which tracks well-being trends and demographics, offers strategies and solutions, and hosts discussions that impact the social connectedness of youth.

Some of the stressors impacting young people, according to research, include academic pressures, widespread gun violence, racism and discrimination (especially with regard to anti-LGBTQ+ policies), political divisiveness, and climate change. And some stressors that more broadly impact families also harm young people, such as the state's lack of child care options, financial insecurity, food insecurity and housing instability.

The goal of the Office of Children's Mental Health report, its director Linda Hall said, is to "take a look at what's happening with kids, to monitor the data around children's well-being and then to work with a broad range of stakeholders to work on improving the children's mental health system."

Speakers Friday included staff from the Office of Children's Mental Health; Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Schofield) and Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), co-chairs of the Legislative Children’s Caucus; and student leaders Samera Osman from Reagan High School in Milwaukee and Nathan Zirk from North Crawford High School in Soldiers Grove, a village south of La Crosse.

From the Article:

The Milwaukee Metro area will soon have its very first location of Forage Kitchen, a Madison-based concept that aims to offer fresh, satisfying scratch-made fare in a quick, convenient format.

Last May, we tipped you off that the locally-owned grain bowl and salad restaurant would be coming to the former Great Clips at 103 E. Silver Spring Dr. in Whitefish Bay. Just seven months later, we have word that the new fast-casual eatery will be opening on Monday, Jan. 15.

Guests who are familiar with the Whitefish Bay location will find the former hair salon utterly transformed. The eatery is bright, airy and welcoming with clean modern lines and a bit of artistic flare thanks to a bespoke mural created by Milwaukee artist Bigshot Robot. Outside, guests can look forward to the addition of a sidewalk patio for al fresco dining in the spring of 2024.

The new location is part of an overall plan for growth of the Forage Kitchen brand, which has signed a lease for their second Milwaukee-area location in Pewaukee, which is expected to open in the spring of 2024.

"As we continue our growth in Madison, we felt the time was right to bring the flavors of Forage Kitchen to folks in and around Milwaukee looking for a fresh, healthy, and satisfying meal," says Henry Aschauer, founder and owner of Forage Kitchen and the eatery’s sister brand, Forage Kombucha.