Milwaukee City Council Work Session on Economic Development – October 7, 2025
Milwaukee City Council Work Session on Economic Development – October 7, 2025
The City Council held a work session on October 7, 2025, to receive updates on economic development activities, including quarterly accomplishments, business engagement efforts, grants, infrastructure projects, and partnership negotiations. Staff and council members discussed progress, challenges, and next steps across multiple initiatives. No formal votes were taken, but direction was provided for future actions.
Economic Development Quarterly Update (Q3 2025)
- Model Milwaukee Best Event: Successful event with strong local business participation; feedback survey planned for Q4.
- Business Friendliness Survey: Draft completed; will establish baseline metrics for council work plan. Expected launch in January 2026 after the holiday season. Distribution via email list and in-person outreach.
- Business License Code Update: Survey will ask businesses how registration dollars should be used (e.g., chamber membership, business associations). Council discussed concerns about using funds for the regional chamber due to advocacy stances and geographic scope.
- Grant Program Launch (URA and Citywide): Launched October 1, 2025. As of October 7, 11 applications received, 13 interested parties, over $550,000 requested out of URA funds and $25,000+ from CET funds. Staff improved outreach and application materials.
- Bike Rack Request Form: Now live under Economic Development pages.
- Website Refinement: Ongoing; updating outdated content and missing pages.
- Marketing and Branding Strategy: ICMA film shot on October 5, 2025, to rebrand Milwaukee; will debut October 25. Efforts focus on retention, expansion, and attraction.
- Main Street CIP: Scope being finalized, covering from the block near City Hall to South Downtown Plaza. Includes water, sewer, electrical, and aesthetic upgrades. Construction likely 1–2 years out; will be disruptive but coordinated. Expected to replicate the previous one-block improvement across six blocks.
- Hubs and Corridors: Planning discussion to be rolled into upcoming residential density conversation.
- URA Action Plan Update: Five-year plan nearing end; will reinitiate with MerCAC advisory committee.
- Market Analysis for Hubs: Possibly starting Q4 or Q1 2026; to be done in-house if capacity allows.
- Q1 2026 Preview: Housing corridor scope refinement, business license code review, revisit Harrison and Main.
Council Member Feedback from Business Outreach
- Council members relayed concerns from local business owners, including:
- High utility costs (electric bill over $1,300/month) and lack of incentives for solar or energy efficiency.
- Difficulty navigating grants; need for hands-on assistance.
- Concerns about large-scale developments (e.g., mall redevelopment) pricing out small businesses despite city grants.
- Frustration with previous county construction project on Linwood.
- Staff noted the Sustainability, Equity, and Economic Development (SEED) team can connect businesses to resources.
- Council member shared positive feedback from URA grant recipients: many feel Milwaukee is in a “renaissance.” Business owners want better signage, a pedestrian map, and improved wayfinding. Events like First Friday and “Where’s Waldo” passports have mixed impact.
- Discussion on creating a physical or digital downtown map; D.A.N. is working on a similar project.
Milwaukee Bay Park Update
- Council President and Mayor have been negotiating with NCPRD board members since January 2025; six meetings held.
- Progress was slow, but after setting an October 1 deadline, more substantive movement occurred. Optimistic about having an agreement ready for council review and potential adoption at the October 21, 2025 meeting.
- Goals: near-term delivery, equitable funding, and original community vision.
- Staff (Joseph and Kia) conducted many behind-the-scenes meetings on the comprehensive IGA.
Gateway Development Project (Cohort/BlackRock Site) Update
- Developer (referred to as “Free”) presented on the status of the project at the gateway to Milwaukee (McLoughlin area).
- Project history: DDA signed in 2017, many extensions due to floodplain mitigation (took 18 months), COVID, rising costs, and market changes.
- Current challenges: Construction costs up from 3.7% to 10% interest, labor costs, occupancy rates in Portland metro around 80-88%, crime/homelessness concerns, and difficulty securing financing.
- Developer stated project cost has risen from $45-50 million to north of $70 million; equity needed has grown from $20-25 million to over $30 million.
- Alternatives considered: converting to 100% affordable housing (would require redesign, smaller units, fewer commercial spaces, and starting from scratch). Developer expressed personal investment in the original vision but is open to input.
- Requested extension of due diligence for 12-18 months (to mid-2027) to allow market conditions to improve. Current extension runs through January 2026.
- Council members asked clarifying questions about timelines, design, and affordable housing feasibility. No decision made; further council discussion needed.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes taken during the work session.
- Staff directed to proceed with business survey launch in January 2026 and continue outreach for grants and programs.
- Council will receive a more detailed Milwaukee Bay Park update and potential agreement at the October 21, 2025 regular meeting.
- For the gateway development project, council will consider the extension request at a future meeting; further analysis of DDA terms and affordable housing options is required.
- Council encouraged continued interdepartmental collaboration (SEED team) to address business challenges.
Meeting Transcript
All right. Um here with my volume. Your boss. I'd say you know the staff side. Um conversation with something else's side. I'm gonna give it over to Syria to take us through what we were able to accomplish last quarter, and then I'll jump in and talk about uh the quarter ahead and even just a little sneak peek into the first year into next year. With that, I'll let you get right into this here. All right, Q3, July through September. We all give model Milwaukee best. Um and economic development connections that we wanted to highlight from this successful event were the many local businesses that were both sponsors and active participants. Um not only were they leading Jazzer size in the middle of the square, but they were also donating electricity to their storefronts, um, as well as the fact that if traffic was moving all the way from historic city hall all the way down to the South Downtown Plaza for the entire day. Um and we will also be looking to get feedback um from businesses in a Q4 survey, which we'll touch on in our future activities, um, where we ask about how events have impacted businesses and how they would like to get involved in events going forward. So speaking of this survey, um, thank you, Councillor Stavan Jordan. Um I took lots of what you had given us via email um and infused some of our other city weeds into it. Um so we have a draft survey that is ready to go out. Um, and so it'll talk about our business friendliness um to get a metric. That's one of the metrics that is on our council work plan. Um we don't have a baseline for, so it will help us get that baseline as well as be able to measure improvements to business friendliness. Um, as well as on this um work plan, we have a business license code update. Um so it'll ask questions along the lines of what would you like to see this meeting go towards? Um, should it be measured based on um employee count or post receipts? Um, so on and so forth. Um, and then those needs and opportunities are where I'm really leaning on what your input was um to kind of measure the health of our business community. Um and then of course the first part, which is the journal info, just to help us understand um those patterns and trends for specific cohorts of businesses. Um yeah, and so I'm thinking, and I'll get your input on this maybe January launch um after the busy uh holiday season, um, but multi-con index. And how will you? Oh, maybe that's on your next one. No, I don't think it is there. So how will you get it out to people and how will you yeah? Yeah, um, we have a pretty good email list for the business license info already. Um so probably gonna start there, see how that goes, and then maybe do another round of in-person. I'm noticing some big gaps in geographic areas and things like that. I think one thing that chamber has said a lot is they would like to see funds from our uh business registration go towards chamber membership. Will that be a component of the business license question? Or that will be a part of the conversation. I know that's something we had told the chamber when we had that discussion with them that's when we revisit that conversation. The mayor and I had a conversation with Jones about that. So good. And they I mean, I think there's a question for us, right? About is the chamber, I mean, there's the chamber, there's the business of Milwaukee, there's Dan. Um we favor one over another, or do we? I mean, you know, do we have money out of it to get and this is connected to our broader update of the business license code that we are working on? Um right now our business registration or business license code is written very much from a revenue perspective, and we're undertaking a process to look at that and update that and bring that to you. So I think these conversations and feedback can be a full bit of that conversation. Yeah, the hope is that we'll get feedback from the businesses that'll be what kind of value do they want to see the registration dollars use for and so then we'll give you that input or that feedback so that you all can make a decision on what that might be, whether it's funding our business uh associations um one or the other, or if that's not even a something we do in those dollars. So we'll find out more. That's the and uh um that's of the or from the chamber. What would that actually go to? I think that's probably I mean, is it part of the advocacy? Is it part of their little bit of both?
openpublica.com