If they can't make everyone happy, they'd screw us.
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I posted this on the KK site and will repeat it here, with some additional comments:
Call me cynical but I smell a rat. My office window directly overlooks the JS site, the Panther Arena and the Bradley Center. I'm looking at all three right now. There is no way an arena with the footprint of the BC can fit on the JS site alone. That site is substantially smaller than the BC site. If you reconfigured an arena vertically and built it edge to edge from street to street -- 3rd to 4th, State to Kilbourn, and buried half of it, so that the upper tiers of the auditorium well above street level might actually have to extend over those surrounding streets, I suppose you might shoehorn a reduced footprint into this site. But I truly doubt there would be any place for a plaza or grand entrance, and I can't imagine a new arena being built without that in this age.
My concern is that this could be the camel's nose in the tent. They cut a deal with the JS, then drip by drip -- with the JS leading the charge, of course, to protect its economic interest in the deal -- the narrative begins to form that the engineering and design is proving too complicated and expensive because of the site limitations and it would all be so much easier if the arena site could span 4th street. Bye bye Milwaukee Panther Arena. If you want precedent go back to the earliest days of the talk about replacing County Stadium. Bud Selig, in his most brilliant move ever, announces that the Brewers will build a new stadium on their own dime. By doing so, he takes full command of the planning, destroying any chance for a downtown stadium like has been built in every other major league city. And by the time we're actually building a new baseball stadium in the valley, where there is no hope of leveraged development, the whole cost is on the taxpayers anyway.
Fool me once...
Here's my additional comment. I spoke with Frank yesterday and as he put it to me: "I don't get pushed easily." I have known Frank for years and that's not hyperbole. If the Bucks or the JS or MU or the politicals decide to push to encroach on (i.e., destroy) the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, they had better have deep lobbying and litigation budgets, and as Jimmy says, they had better be able to convince the NBA to suspend their ultimatum, because there's no way it's going to be resolved by 2017.
Jimmy, you are missing something very critical to this analysis. The new Arena CAN'T extend to the river from the JS site. The block east of 4th street is occupied entirely by the Milwaukee County Historical Society building -- a designated landmark, I believe --and Pere Marquette Park. You'd have as much a chance of building on that property as you would of tearing down the Public Library, City Hall or St. Josaphat's Basilica to do so. Not happening.
Meanwhile, there are two vacant city blocks IMMEDIATELY adjacent to the BC. The mind reels.
The new facility wouldn't need to be the size of the Bradley Center, since a great deal of it would go underground.
It's entirely possible that Lasry and Edens are going to be developing the Journal land to go with a new facility on the Bradley Center space. Who knows.
So where do the Bucks play while the BC is torn down and a new arena is built on the same footprint? That's at least a two season situation. Could be three. If they are buying the JS property for ancillary development it could only mean they expect to build on the Panther Arena/Milwaukee Theater site. Since they can hardly announce that with no buy-in from the WCD, it would be hard to believe they are looking at the JS site for anything other than a site -- or at least a partial site -- for the new arena itself. OnMilwaukee.com sure as hell didn't prepare that rendering of a new arena on the JS site. It came from someone with an interest.
Looking at Google Maps, it looks like they could make it work if they take out 3rd street.
They better not take the Arena.