For years I've driven past the many solid red brick apartments lining North Avenue in the 80- and 90-numbered blocks, thinking they looked like good places to live. I've even had a landlord fantasy or two as I try to find ways to bring co-housing to Wauwatosa.  A couple of three building units look ideally suited to the concept.

But yesterday, I saw the same buildings through new eyes. As I dropped an acquaintance off at one, she began to tell about her building's rapid disintegration since a new landlord bought the building and, apparently, some others near by.

He or she or they had failed to notify the residents about who they were or how to contact them. There was no way to get things fixed or replaced.

They'd stopped plowing the alley as the previous landlord had done. Now old residents who'd lived there long were struggling with new dangers and duties. Rougher folks seemed to be hanging around the area.

Only a matter of time, said the acquaintance, before she'd have to leave. The next tenants would be people with fewer options, less money. A slum lord can keep making money even with falling rents, long as you work the math right. And so the slide begins.

In the recent neighborhood meetings for long-range planning, the subject of absentee landlords came up in regard to the east side of Tosa. I didn't hear anyone talking about the long solid center of the community.

Encouraging investment in buildings has to be accompanied by requiring a high level of responsibility for maintaining them. As more non-resident owners buy up property, it may be time for a closer look at rules, regulations, and enforcement.

Tosans tend to be passionate about their city. So it’s surprising that only about 40 – 50 people have shown up for the three comprehensive plan visioning sessions to date. And that’s the total number, not the number for each meeting.

Tonight (September 25) is the last session before Vandewalle and Associates begins huddling to develop the draft that will guide the city’s future. Please take this chance to share your most important ideas about Wauwatosa.

Although tonight’s meeting is for the “east south side,” people from anywhere in Tosa are welcome to attend.

I’ll just quote Janice Kayser’s article from September 19 for more information:

City still seeking input on comprehensive plan

Residents on the city's east side south of the Menomonee River are urged to attend a meeting on the development of the city's comprehensive plan from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, in the Tosa Room at the Muellner Building at Hart Park, 7300 Chestnut St. (emphasis added)

The city's community development department hopes to encourage public input on the city's long-range land use plan and have been split up into sections of the city. . .A map showing how the city was divided into sections for the purposes of the meetings can be found on the city's Web site at wauwatosa.net.

Community Development Director Nancy Welch said attendance at the prior meetings has been "abysmal" and hopes residents will step up to the plate at this last meeting to provide needed input.

North Avenue. Just saying the name of this major artery opens a rush to memory and sometimes judgment.

Mayfair was the only Tosa place on North Avenue Barbara Miner mentioned in last week's Journal Sentinel article "Heading West," a bus ride from poverty to affluence.

The article spawned lots of politically polarized responses, some of which appear in today's opinion letter page. Most were of the Patrick McIlhern "make yourself middle-class and relentlessly affluent" variety.

But how to do that? Minus the "relentless" part, which may be a problem, not a solution.

"Fixing" North Avenue is a major concern for Wauwatosa's future, one that will be addressed in the comprehensive planning process. You still have a chance to weigh in next Tuesday, September 25, 6:30-9:00, at the Muellner Building in Hart Park.

When I was a kid, North Avenue was a place of prosperous small businesses. My dad drove there from Glendale in search of incredible German bakery and to have his blueprints developed. And small business still seems to be the way to go there.

Some prosper on North Avenue now, many in Tosa. My favorite hang out, McBob's, is in the dreaded "east of 60th Street" area, and across the street is the best place around to buy cheap vegetables and rice, a Vietnamese grocery store.

Even in an area that gives most of us Tosans pause, there's the venerable Jake's Deli.

And Damon Dorsey's converting a crack house into an upscale custard stand, Scoopz. "Until we move to a culture of entrepreneurialism, Milwaukee will be an uncompetitive city where people are sitting around, waiting for something to happen," he said.

My guess, the same is true of Tosa.

At last week's comprehensive planning meeting for Tosa's east side, there was much consensus around doing something to shore up the small business there and improve safety, but few specific suggestions. Neighbors with houses near the street don't much like the idea of buildings even as large as the Locker's building on 92nd and North. They'd rather keep the scale small and low, so as not to be dwarfed.

I wonder if more flexibility and entrepreneurialism might not be called for. Could we accommodate places that make the far eastern part of the avenue thrive? Places like Cush, a "swank, upscale cocktail lounge specializing in martinis"? That means more liquor licenses, traffic and noise.

And maybe prosperity.

I don't have the answers. If you do, make sure you weigh in with them Tuesday!

This west sider infiltrated tonight's east side visioning meeting for the city's long-range planning process.

My intentions were honorable: I only wanted to discuss the two major ideas I had after cogitating on the west side meeting. One of those, the need for a center for this side of Tosa, I've already mentioned.

The other was a riverwalk for the village, and, by extension, walking/bike trails all along the river and Underwood Creek. Making the west side walkable, too, is a noble idea.

Inspired by the east siders, a few more ideas popped up. One was an overpass to get folks, especially kids, across Highway 100. Nobody liked that. But it seems a lot cheaper and easier than my more brilliant idea: build a deep tunnel and run the whole highway underneath its present location so pedestrians and light traffic can coexist more peacefully above.

Some intriguing ideas from this meeting were using the Little Red House for a train/rapid transit stop and moving through traffic off of North Avenue and onto Burleigh.

It was no surprise: everyone wanted the Eschweiler buildings preserved and the green space behind them preserved. But then, nearly everyone but developers has been saying that for as long as I can remember.

Everyone wants to invest in small business development along North Avenue.

And everyone liked the suggestion to put sidewalks all the way east along State Street.

The area of no agreement was tax base development. But surprisingly, lots of people favored spending tax money on needed services. Some people, in other words, thought that taxes were okay if used for good things.

One person mentioned the importance of maintaining neighborhood integrity. Apparently, Wisconsin Lutheran College has already bought some properties in Ravenswood. Taking a bite out of that neighborhood would cut into its neighborhoodiness, something we Tosans value very much.

My group mentioned the need to grow and sustain the population of Tosa. There's a lot a city of 50,000 can do that a smaller one can't.

The coolest thing was learning about Google Alerts. Someone said that's how he'd learned about this meeting. He'd created a daily alert for "Wauwatosa Plan Commission." Google Alerts updates you regularly on the search terms you tell it to look for.

But you don't have to do that. I'll tell you.

The last of four area visioning sessions as part of Tosa's long-range planning process is next Tuesday, September 25, 2007, at Hart Park Muellner Building, Tosa Room, 6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. It's for the south quadrant, but people from any part of Tosa can attend.

Don't say "I wish they'd asked me." Tell 'em! And if you tell me, I'll share your ideas here.

Scott Walker plans to sell off another chunk of county land in Tosa, this time 8.6 acres, to Wisconsin Lutheran College, according to the Shepherd Express and the Business Journal.

The asking price? $100,000 an acre.

I don’t know what the going price of land is, but there’s an acre of land divided into six lots for sale at about 49th and Bluemound in Milwaukee's Story Hill neighborhood. The asking price? $149,000. Per lot.

Six-and-a-half times higher than this prime land in Wauwatosa.

An acre in the Research Park across the street from the land that now is a county greenhouse goes for $150,000, with one plot valued at $400,000/acre.

In July, HSA bought 24 acres of the former warehouses for Kohl's Food Stores Inc. in the Burleigh triangle for $9 million. My math isn’t great, but doesn’t that come to over $300,000 an acre?

The parcel being discussed is behind the county garages on Watertown Plank Road and next to the athletic complex land the school bought a couple years ago, also for $100,000 an acre. The College holds an option to buy the land at that price for 5 or 10 years from the date of the first deal, depending on whose report you read.

Someone looks to be a shrewd bargainer here. I'll leave it to you to guess who.

Last night I attended the long range planning “visioning” meeting for Tosa's west side area. A small group of folks pored over maps in the basement of the police department, drawing colored lines and pasting colored stars to show where we thought things in Tosa should change.

At our table was Helmut Toldt, developer, who is resubmitting plans to develop the Walnut Street site. (I’m not breaking this story: it’s in today’s Business Journal. But you can still say you heard it from me first!)

For the most part, he came to listen. After all, this was the neighborhood that would be most directly affected by site development on the landfill.

We had no strong ideas about the site, and he didn’t press us.

But at one point he asked quietly, “Is there any development that’s happened around here that you like?”

It was a good question. We’re awfully good at what we don’t want and what we fear. But not so good at embracing new things. None of us had an answer, though now I might say the new Locker building and the posh Mandel condos in Elm Grove.

And after I did my homework, I might point to Toldt’s own SixPoints Neighborhood development at 66th and Greenfield. I’d seen it earlier in the day when I visited the Farmer’s Market, and thought “whoa! Where did that come from?”

The more I look at the dense and thoughtful development, the more I like it, once I get used to the scale.

When I first heard about Toldt’s earlier proposal for the Walnut Street site, some 400 units of mixed use, I thought it was too dense. But then I got to thinking how badly the west side needs a center, and how it might start there, a mixed use higher density area.

The SixPoints development includes a community center. For the west side of Tosa, that’s where our planning should start, too.

This is not a paid or unpaid advertisement for Toldt, who I didn’t consult in writing this, by the way.

A concerned Tosa citizen called me on cranky writing and failure to do research. He was responding to the August 27 blog "Government and mall watching," in which I may have ever so vaguely hinted at favoritism in banning check cashing businesses in the Village--but not along Highway 100.

Only he said it much more gently.

I have watched the process on the new ordinance somewhat carefully,and I have spoken a number of times with Mayor Estness, City Attorney Kesner, and other members of the Common Council. I do not believe the new ordinance is a result of "what's good for eastern Tosa doesn't matter out here in the wild west", but rather the best compromise that can be reached today in the current legal climate to restrict as much as possible the proliferation of convenient cash businesses in Wauwatosa. It is my opinion that the Council, if it thought such an ordinance would stand up in court, would ban the businesses entirely.

He then suggested that I contact Mayor Estness and City Attorney Kesner to get a better understanding of the disparity. I did, but their e-mail replies got stuck in my filter.

Isn't it strange that e-mail from the government gets trapped but all those messages about various alterations to people's boyfriends' anatomy don't? But I digress.

At any rate, Mayor Estness graciously invited me to view the city maps with her and city planner Nancy Welch to see the big picture. And Mr. Kesner gave a thorough explanation, the whole shebang of which I'm including in italics below.

The bottom line: it's all about zoning and distance from residences.

Cities don't have the power to restrict exorbitant interest rates, which are the culprits in payday loan predation. Wisconsin needs to restore interest rate limits for consumer loans. That would include credit cards, and it's hard to imagine that 18%, the old limit, wouldn't be enough.

And while it wouldn't address the loan issue, banks certainly could offer check cashing services for modest fees. It would be a great community service, and they'd still make money.

Now, "the rest of the story," with thanks to Mr. Kesner.

The important thing to remember in putting these restrictions together is that we cannot prohibit such businesses entirely, although we can place certain restrictions on their locations, as we did. There have
been court cases in Wisconsin that say specifically that they cannot be prohibited entirely. These "distance from residential" and "distance from each other" restrictions were of the type specifically approved in court cases in Racine and Madison.

They are specifically restricted from being in "Trade Districts", and coincidentally, the only two "Trade Districts" are the Village and the East end of North Avenue. The proposed location in the North Avenue Trade District is what started this whole controversy in the first place.

These types of businesses can be located in AA Business and AA Commercial Districts, if they receive Conditional Use approval from the Common Council, but only so long as they are on a parcel that is more than 250 feet from any residentially zoned parcel. That distance from residential parcels applies the same on the East and West sides of the City. There are simply more AA Business and AA Commercial zoned parcels on the West side of the City anyways, which might allow for some potential locations, but this is true for any business or commercial venture, not just these types of businesses.

It may simply be a consequence of the geography of Wauwatosa that, if you have to allow a business to run, they are more likely to find locations on the West Side, since there are just more business and commercial areas in certain areas of the West side. But there is no difference in the fact that "convenient cash businesses" still have to be more than 250 feet from residential parcels, no matter which side of town they are on.

Yesterday was a 12+ hour day spent listening to people in neighborhoods very different from mine talking about great senior housing. First was a group around 6th and Walnut in Bronzeville, later a group in Sherman Park. In both cases, the idea was a densely build "campus."

And while the approaches a group of talented architects offered for the neighborhood sites were wildly different, there were a couple ideas worth considering for Wauwatosa.

1. Forget the golf-course ghetto approach to housing for the aging. This is Wisconsin, not Arizona. People here have lives.

2. Build a place people want to go. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a mini park, a library, a health club, a community center. Then fit the buildings around that.

3. Mixed use is the way to go, and not just because it’s in vogue. The more you bring services and products to seniors (or any of us, for that matter), the easier it is to live in a community. Cafes and clinics are great business components of a senior housing center. But a grocery store—that’s the bomb. A grocery store that sells fresh food, not just boxes and cans.

4. Put the parking underground. You can’t have a great looking, walkable development if more than a third of the space is devoted to the automobile, in motion or stationary. The city should require this—and subsidize it, if necessary.

5. Build everything to better than American with Disabilities Act standards. Moms with little kids love grab bars, too. But use the Michael Graves ones, not the put-me-on-the-ice-floe-now ugly ones.

6. Transportation, transportation, transportation.

7.Expect things to change, so build to bring help and services in rather than shipping people out. People will hide a problem rather than getting help if they think that would result in exile to another place, even if it's just down the block.

8. And how about providing places for caregivers to live, too? Even, dare I say it, families. Caregiving's hard, but it's harder from a distance. And some of us would prefer being together.

Descending from soap box and signing off, while we're both still young. . .

How—and where—seniors will live is a lively discussion topic for communities with aging populations. And that would be almost all of them, including Wauwatosa.

“Housing for elderly sparks protest” was a front page headline in the August 27 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as one Mequon neighborhood digs in to oppose an 8-person assisted living group home among their half-million dollar homes.

Just a day earlier, we read “Condos find niche in Grafton: new projects helping attract seniors to walkable downtown.” The article profiles a Mequon couple who wanted to avoid the traffic congestion in their neighborhood, so they moved into Grafton’s “rural-urban downtown, where you can walk to get some coffee or walk to the river or walk to a restaurant. You don’t always need your car anymore.”

What’s going on here?

On one hand, we see smart developers going after the affluent “young” senior population. On the other hand, we see communities objecting to assisted living "homes" in suburban neighborhoods.

Wauwatosa has been pretty forward thinking about community-based residential facilities (CBRFs) like the one proposed for Mequon. Still, each time one is proposed, debates go on about property values, school age populations, and “the fabric of the neighborhood.”

One alderman, not young himself, suggested that elderly people should use “facilities like Luther Manor and San Camillo instead of taking up single family residences,” according to the minutes from a Plan Commission meeting last year.

Of course, not everyone wants to go to or can afford those fine places.

It looks like the idea of moving seniors “out” of where they now live is strong, whether it’s to chic and pricey housing in revitalized downtown areas or to larger community-based residential facilities in more commercial parts of town.

Move them, but don’t put ‘em in my back yard is the message in Mequon. “I think it’s a great thing. I just don’t think they should be in the middle of a neighborhood with 30 kids around,” a woman said.

You’d think we were talking about sex offenders.

Of course the story’s more complicated than that. It seems that the Mequon CBRF owner neglected to talk to the neighbors about her plans, and that’s always a huge mistake. The first principle of creating a great community place is “the community is the expert,” the place you start.

Still, it seems there's a huge disconnect between what people in the aging field and those in the rest of the community are thinking. Staying in your home or at least your community and non-institutional group living is the direction we're headed. But the trends don't seem to have filtered into the way the community at large sees aging.

For many seniors, the best place to live is home, or a place like home. And some of those places should be in the neighborhoods in which people raised their families.

No better place to explore the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” rule.

I'll wait for the smoke to clear before I go back to affordable housing in Wauwatosa. Which I will. But here's something for nearly everyone who likes to play online.

Walk Score touts itself as “helping homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods.”

You type in your address and up pops a “walk score;” a map; and a list of stores, parks, schools, fitness ventures, and more within walking distance of your house.

You can click on each category (coffee shops, say) and the list expands to show everything nearby—and how far it is to walk there. Clicking on each icon gives the name and address of the destination.

My neighborhood in western Tosa gets a dismal walk score of 32/100—not so good. The Tosa Public Library gets a score of 63, much better, but not as good as the Walker’s Point address of my office: 73. With all those Mexican restaurants, I'd give it a 90.

Why does having a walkable neighborhood matter? Well, we know now that city dwellers in places like New York and Chicago are living longer than suburban and country dwellers, and some say it’s because of walking.

Walking Score adds, “A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood. Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15 - 45.”

Who knew?!

Just for the heck of it, I scored Lowe’s on Burleigh to get a sense of walkability in the soon-to-be-developed Bermuda—I mean, Burleigh, Triangle. Same as my house: 32.

Wouldn’t it be great if development here factored in the “great neighborhood” characteristic of walkability?

Another big developer has bought a piece of the Burleigh Triangle pie (the area bounded by West Burleigh Street and Hwy 45).

HSA Commercial Real Estate’s acquisition of 23 acres is expected to yield more than $390 million in development value, with the earlier purchase by Icon expected to yield another $130 million, according to the August 17 Business Journal.

Mixed use is the mantra for the developers. That means offices, condos, retail, parking structures, and more. (Remember that 20 story building Icon is planning? I'm still shuddering.)

Just what $500 million in “development value” means for us neighbors and taxpayers is unclear. But I don’t need a crystal ball to predict traffic nightmares. And I don’t need one to predict that unless the community steps in, the condos will all be high end, out of the reach of the average Tosa retiree who everyone claims to want to keep in town.

One way to mitigate that problem is to require a set-aside of 10-20% of living units for workforce and senior housing (aka “affordable” housing) in a Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) district. That would mean that a small portion of the condo units would have lower prices that teachers, firefighters, and the average grandparent could afford.

Icon is already lobbying for a TIF district to help pay for roadway improvements along West Burleigh Street. Seems like the time is right for adding a TIF for affordable housing.

The city’s comprehensive planning process is just getting underway. I’d love to hear from anyone who was involved in the public vision workshops scheduled for late July, or the focus group/leadership interviews scheduled for August.

My name is on the list (hint, hint), in case anyone in the City Planning Department is reading this.

Friday's Business Journal printed a rendering of the new development to be built on the southeast corner of 68th and Wells. The project in its present form was first approved in August 2005 and finally got the go-ahead signal.

It's an interesting looking building that I think will fit well in the neighborhood. In fact, it will add to the village character and the potential for foot traffic that should help businesses like the wonderful La Tarte across the street.

Originally, the developer, Tosan William Ibach, proposed 20 units on the 15,000 square foot lot. That would, as the neighbors objected, have been a nightmare. The current plan is for 12 units, twice as many as the neighbors proposed, but a good compromise.

Do you think that's the plan all along, to come in with a top-heavy plan and negotiate down to a moderate, appropriate size? That happened on 115th Street near Watertown Plan Road, where Underwood Station Apartments are now.

I don't remember the original proposal, but I think it was for a building about three times as large as the one actually built. The neighbors rallied, not to prevent all development but to make sure it was development that made sense. And we prevailed.

Maybe it's an effective way to build neighborhoods, threatening the character of the place and letting neighbors rally to its defense. But wouldn't you think there'd be some kind of prevailing guidelines for building height relative to the neighboring buildings--and maximum density in relation to the size of the site and surrounding buildings?

It just might cut a lot of unnecessary animosity and speed things up.

I'm thinking we must like all that drama. Or someone must. . .