The Avenues West neighborhood, which includes the Marquette campus, has experienced a drop in crime as developers try to create a cleaner image for the neighborhood and play off its proximity to downtown.,”As other neighborhoods in and around downtown Milwaukee undergo revitalization, development could be coming full circle to the city's near west side.

The Avenues West neighborhood, which includes Marquette's campus, has experienced a drop in crime as developers try to create a cleaner image for the neighborhood and play off its proximity to downtown.

But the transformation of the neighborhood – roughly bordered by I-43 on the east, North 27th Street on the west, West Highland Boulevard on the north and I-94 on the south – is coming slowly. Community leaders said the area is still hurting in many ways from the consolidation, closing and exodus of hospitals from the area in the 1970s.

With the hospitals (only the merged Aurora Sinai Medical Center, 945 N. 12th St. remains) went employment. It created a large oversupply of one-bedroom, studio and efficiency-type housing in the neighborhood, said Alderman Bob Bauman, whose 4th District includes Marquette and Avenues West.

"A lot of those properties became blighted, ghettoized, and went from working and middle-class people living in those apartment buildings to essentially low-income and, in many cases, no-income people," Bauman said. "That is when you saw a huge precipitous decline in the quality of life and median household income, and a huge increase in criminal activity."

Department of City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux said he is optimistic the city and private sector will have the ability to buy and redevelop most of the housing stock that has not already been redeveloped.

"There's no doubt that the exodus of those institutions created a significant gap, and it's taken a couple decades to have that area come back in a strong way—and it is coming back," Marcoux said.

Crime has dropped in the neighborhood by more than 60 percent since it reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to June Moberly, executive director of the Avenues West Association.

But the community still suffers from a dense housing stock and low owner-occupancy rates, meaning that few homeowners live in their residences. Bauman cited U.S. Census figures from 2000 that showed census tracts in the Avenues West area with owner occupancy rates of 7 percent and 9 percent.

Median household income in three Census tracts that comprise Avenues West were $11,090, $14,224 and $18,370.

As owner-occupancy rates increase westward along Wisconsin Avenue, Avenues West finds itself between suburban-like residential communities and downtown.

"In every city I've seen, you have some area that transitions from downtown to the homeowner," Moberly said. "And that's what Avenues West is."

The neighborhood's proximity to downtown could be a major selling point to prospective homebuyers.

Condominium conversion projects and some new construction are taking place throughout the neighborhood. One area community leaders hope to revive is the "SoHi" district on North 27th Street south of Highland Boulevard. SoHi is one of three districts in Main Street Milwaukee, a public-private neighborhood economic development effort.

Bauman said the area is still down the road from being able to sell new construction at market rate prices, but Marcoux said the market would support housing being built and planned.

Marquette has played a significant role in neighborhood development. Under its Campus Circle program in the early 1990s, the university acquired and rehabilitated blighted properties and resold them to landlords to improve neighborhood housing, spur economic development and reduce crime, said Rana Altenburg, vice president of public affairs at Marquette.

Altenburg said Marquette is one of the largest contributors to the Avenues West business improvement district, which reflects the university's involvement in neighborhood development.

The university has contributed to street-scaping and lighting improvements along Wisconsin Avenue, Altenburg said. In addition, new buildings are planned, including new engineering building on West Wisconsin Avenue between North 16th and 17th Streets and an administration building at 1212 W. Wisconsin Ave.

"The Avenues West neighborhood, which includes Marquette, has to all be healthy," Moberly said. "And if it is, Marquette will thrive. Marquette will be fine without it probably, but it would be better if the surrounding neighborhood is better."

The growth of development along Wisconsin Avenue west of campus isn't happening with new construction, but with new twists on old buildings.

Neighborhood leaders point to the restoration of the Ambassador Hotel, 2308 W. Wisconsin Ave., as a step in the right direction for the rebirth of Avenues West.

Developer Rick Wiegand, who now owns about 15 properties in the neighborhood including the Ambassador, said he decided to revive the old hotel because of the negative effect it was having on his other buildings.

"I realized that by changing the hotel I could make a substantial impact on changing the neighborhood," Wiegand said.

But by turn of the century, most of the homes once owned by the wealthy were converted or torn down. Multi-family developments and efficiency apartments increased the neighborhood's density, said John Gurda, a Milwaukee historian and local author.

"The truth is it's been a neighborhood of renters for generations," he said.

Unlike other historic neighborhood structures, The Pabst Mansion, 2000 W. Wisconsin Ave., has been able to survive as a tourist destination alone. And it is attracting people to the neighborhood who might otherwise not have come, said John Eastberg, the mansion's senior historian.

Marcoux said he expects a turn for the better in neighborhood commercial and housing developments, which will attract people of upper, lower and middle incomes.

"I think what we've got at end of the day is a high-functioning neighborhood on the west side," Marcoux said. "It's a very exciting neighborhood."

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