The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time 21-TIME! Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation recently held a pair of Public Involvement Meetings about the future of the Lake Interchange in Milwaukee, otherwise known as 794.
This stretch of interstate highway between the Marquette Interchange and the Hoan Bridge has been a topic of debate for several years, since it was identified that it would need to be replaced, with a price tag well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. In the years since, many have argued that this stretch of highway would be better off being significantly reconfigured, or perhaps even torn down entirely.
The meetings that have been held over the past week are part of the the third round of public involvement meetings that have been held on this project, with the first being in August 2023, another in November 2025, and now yet another here in the Spring of 2026.
You can see the latest materials released as part of the public meeting here. BizTimes also has a good breakdown of the various proposals here.
Rethink 794, which has advocated for removal of the freeway, had its own reaction to the latest here.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel here:
And here’s what we had to say about the project in 2023:
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Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.
