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 future of the Stadium Freeway is something we’ve covered a whole lot here at The Recombobulation Area.
Almost exactly five years ago, I wrote a piece as part of our multi-part “Expanding the Divide” series on why we should tear down the Stadium Freeway and convert it to a boulevard, opening up opportunities for housing and development and better connection between neighborhoods.
Here’s that column, to refresh your memory:
About a year later, change did begin to actually happen. Mayor Cavalier Johnson, County Executive David Crowley and Craig Thompson, then the secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, stood together at Washington Park to announce they would be initiating a study to reexamine the future of the Stadium Freeway.
I wrote about this at the time, too.
But that was May 2022, and since, a 1.5 to 2-year study turned into a nearly four-year study, and as Jeramey Jannene at Urban Milwaukee reported in mid-May, the determination of what’s next is that … another study is needed.
You can read his piece about this here.
Or, you can listen to our conversation in the podcast and video here. While there appears to be broad support for converting this old, hulking freeway spur into a boulevard, any concrete action on the project still seems years and years away.
Along with discussing this project, we also talked about Jeramey’s recent reporting on a number of topics, including:
Wisconsin Center District CEO Marty Brooks (who was discussed at length in a recent podcast episode with Gary Witt of the Pabst Theater Group) now cleaning out his office as the board has considered removing him from his position
After Congressman Bryan Steil got in some hot water over celebrating funding for lead pipes that he voted against, as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we talked about what is actually happening in the city of Milwaukee when it comes to lead pipe replacement. Milwaukee’s lead pipe replacement has become more efficient and less costly, and they’ve been able to replace more lead pipes because of it, but the program is still at risk. Read more here.
2026 has been dubbed the “Year of Housing” in Milwaukee by Mayor Cavalier Johnson, and we talked about a recently proposed project to use funding from downtown projects to fund housing and infrastructure west of I-43 in the King Park neighborhood. Read more about that here.
Urban Milwaukee is a terrific publication and you should really be subscribing. Do that here.
You can also watch the podcast on our YouTube Channel here:
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.
