Ken Leinbach recently sailed by canoe through the Menomonee Valley when he saw a rare mink, something he had never noticed in more than 20 years of operating an environmental high school in Milwaukee.
“When I saw it, I couldn’t even,” said Leinbach, CEO of Urban Ecology Center Inc.
This is another example of the diversity of flora and fauna at Three Bridges Park.
The park has helped the Menomonee Valley from a commercial wasteland to a home for manufacturing, recreation, catering and other new uses, adding one of Milwaukee’s largest hotels.
“It’s been an advantage for the city,” Leinbach said.
Now, the membership that helped create Three Bridges Park and Valley Branch of the Center for Urban Ecology is coming to an end, with the latest donations raised from this $25 million public-private fundraising campaign.
About $2.5 million has been earmarked in a donation fund to help the center help the park, said attorney Michael Hatch, chairman of the board of directors of Menomonee Valley Partners Inc., a nonprofit organization that oversees the valley’s redevelopment efforts.
Three Bridges Park “turned out to be a glorious convenience for the business we’re trying in the valley,” Hatch said.
With brands and employers competing for talent, he said, Menomonee Valley corporations can use the park’s presence as “a genuine recruiting and retention bonus.”
Urban Ecology Center and Menomonee Valley Partners worked with municipal and state agencies to create Three Bridges Park, the adjacent branch of the menomonee Central Valley and an extension of the Hank Aaron State Trail.
Nicknamed “From the Ground Up”, the crusade was officially introduced in 2010. But its roots go back about 10 years.
It is at this time that Leinbach is talking to attorney Peter McAvoy, who deals with environmental fitness issues at the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center.
This organization participated in the network planning procedure for the redevelopment of the Menomonee Valley.
The ideas come with the conversion of deserted railroad outlets to the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center on 130 acres between Miller Park and Falk Corp. (now Rexnord Gear), 3001 W. Canal St.
There were also concept plans to create a 24-acre park of former rail assets along the Menomonee River, just south of the Falk plant and the long-term shopping center.
This caught Leinbach’s attention.
The nonprofit urban ecology center derives much of its profits from providing environmental education systems to schools.
Middle school won applications from the schools program on the south side of Milwaukee that may simply not work because they were also from the base on the east side of downtown in Riveraspect Park.
“I said, “Hey, when you get to the park, keep us in mind, ” said Leinbach.
Several years later, after helping liberate the mall, Menomonee Valley Partners began pursuing plans for the park.
The organization contacted Leinbach and the two organizations formed an association to raise the budget for the park and a section of the Valley of the Center for Urban Ecology.
The center’s education systems would operate long-term near the park, anything it had already done with the original operation at Riverside Park, as well as a 19th facility that opened in Washington Park in 2007.
“It seemed like our goals were pretty good,” Hatch said.
The Center for Urban Ecology opened its location in the Valley in 2012 at 3700 W. Pierce St.
It is next to a Segment of The Hank Aaron State Trail that includes a pedestrian tunnel, tracks and a bridge over the Menomonee River, which connects the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center with the Silver City neighborhood.
The 6,000-square-foot center, which has remodeled an old housing and tavern space, has helped attract additional investments in the area.
These come with Escuela Verde, an autonomous school focused on environmental sustainability. The school opened in 2015 in 3628 W. Pierce St.
Velobahn Coffee – Cycle opened in 2017 at 3618 W. Pierce St.
Fyxation Bicycle Co. and Wisconsin Bike Fed are also located in this building, which a subsidiary of Fyxation purchased in 2018.
Meanwhile, Three Bridges Park opened in 2013.
The park runs along the south-mountainous south coast of the Menomonee River, west of South 35th Street to the east of South 27th Street, where it connects to Mitchell Park.
Three Bridges Park includes trails and trails for motorcycles, adding a component of Hank Aaron’s paved trail.
It also features network gardens, banks and the river for fishing, canoeing and kayaking.
In addition to a rich variety of wildflowers and other green spaces, in and around the park are beavers, deer, coyotes and the occasional badger, Leinbach said.
It’s having a park next to brands and other companies in the soft industry, Hatch said.
And plans for the aircraft helped land Ingeteam, a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer, said.
The company announced in 2010 that it would expand its new North American plant at the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center.
Ingeteam examined dozens of locations across the country before restricting their potential options to Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hatch said. While Grand Rapids presented more money, Ingeteam executives were influenced by the proximity of a park, he said.
Frozen pizza maker Palermo Villa Inc., which in 2005 agreed to the first company in the mall, has expanded its operations there.
The CEO, Giacomo Fallucca, praised the paintings that Menomonee Valley Partners and the Urban Ecology Center have made in the park.
“The commitment to the network that these two organizations have demonstrated in this assignment reminds us why our company chose this location,” Fallucca said in a statement.
The mall is now full, with a dozen companies including Rishi Tea, Derse, J.F. Ahern, Charter Wire and Caleffi Hydronics.
Menomonee Valley Partners and Mayor Tom Barrett’s administration are now working to rebuild the valley sites and create a new walk on the Valley River.
The river boardwalk will be built in stages as the plots unfold, said Corey Zetts, CEO of Menomonee Valley Partners.
These are the properties of Kneeland: 15 acres between West Mt. Vernon Avenue and the Menomonee River, east of Standard Electric Supply Co., 222 N. Emmber Lane.
This place will want a new way to make it accessible, Zetts said. The road could be funded in 2021, he said, with developers on two state and city plots.
Both Zetts and Hatch said Three Bridges Park would continue to attract business to the valley, adding the Kneeland properties.
“How wonderful it would be at lunchtime to walk part of an hour along the trail,” Hatch said.
Tom Daykin can be emailed to [email protected] and on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.