MILWAUKEE — President Joe Biden touted a $36.6 million investment Wednesday that’s coming to a major Milwaukee corridor.
A 2.6-mile stretch of 6th Street will be reconstructed to better serve all users of the road.
The busy road connects Milwaukee’s north and south sides to downtown.
Let’s go in-depth with several voices from the community who know the history of the street and how it will change.
For Lamar Franklin, walking down 6th Street is nothing like how he remembers it when he was a kid.
“It was safe back in the day because we didn’t have that many cars for one thing and people weren’t driving like they are now,” he said.
That’s because Franklin grew up and went to school near the corridor before the road was widened.
“Widening the street like it is now kind of opened the gates for people flying down the street,” he said.
Ben Johnson was the Common Council president around the time the corridor was transformed to accommodate interstate traffic flowing into downtown.
“It was a real narrow street with houses on both sides and real big trees,” he said.
He remembers the changes came at a cost to the community, especially those whose homes and businesses were replaced with more pavement.
“People lost their housing and the difference is that most of the people were renters and there was not much rental housing available for the displaced people so that was the biggest controversy,” he recalled.
But more than half a century of prioritizing convenience for drivers will soon change with a brand new grant from the federal government.
A city of Milwaukee rendering from a downtown intersection shows what’s likely to come. It shows the street narrowed down to one lane of traffic in both directions, physically separated bike lanes along with marked and shortened crosswalks for pedestrians.
It’s something the city calls a ‘complete street’ as it’s safer for all of its users, whether they walk, work, shop, or live along the stretch like Cassandra Brooks.
“For me, that would be a big help for security if they could narrow the lanes and have more lighting and traffic control, it would be helpful,” she said.
For the first time in half a century, Brooks says she can’t wait for it to feel more like a neighborhood than a commercial area.
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