FOUND! Reward: Help find lost orange tabby in Malvern and Pennsylvania avenues area

Update: 5pm. A skinny Busy was found this afternoon about 4:30pm. The mail carrier who delivers to the the cat’s owners saw the cat and asked the owner of the home to call Jennifer, Busy’s owner. A happy reunion ensued! Jennifer said Busy is extremely thin but he’s home!

Busy, who is missing, is an orange male tabby cat with tiger stripes and a white chest/paws. He is approximately 10-years-old, is not declawed, and he is missing one of his top teeth. Busy got out of the family’s home near the intersection of Malvern and Pennsylvania avenues “around February 1″ and has not been seen him since. Owner says he is extremely friendly and is terribly missed by the family.

The family is offering a reward to the person who finds him or can direct owner to the cat’s whereabouts. Contact Jennifer at (414) 232-3357 or jensarnowski@gmail.com, if you have information.

Home burglary on Delaware Ave. Feb. 3 while residents slept

A burglary took place Feb. 3 on the 2700 block of S. Delaware Ave. between the hours of 1am and 4am while the residents were asleep.

The thief took a Wii, two laptops, two wallets, and a piggy bank that was taken from a child’s bedroom, while he slept.

The perpetrator entered the home via the front door, which the thief left wide open, propped by a snow shovel. The homeowner said the front door was inadvertently left unlocked when they went to bed.

Kiko, the family’s male brown tabby cat escaped during the event and has not returned home.

The emptied piggy bank was found about two blocks from the family’s home, near Pryor Avenue and Fulton Street. Another resident found a credit card and some work-related cards next to a dumpster in an alley about half a block away from where the piggy bank was discovered.

Police officers who investigated the burglary were not able to find prints or other evidence that might help identify the thief, the homeowner said.

The family is asking for help finding their cat. Info here.

 

Pursuit of alcohol licenses resembles carnival game

A contest over alcohol licenses is brewing in Bay View between Hub Super Market and A. K. Food Mart. What complicates the story is the local alderman’s power to affect the outcome.

Currently Paresh Patel, Hub owner, possesses a license to sell beer in his grocery store at 2277 S. Howell Ave. His neighbor, Jesse Singh, who owns and operates A. K. Foot Mart half a block south of Hub, also wants a beer license, which he believes he needs to fairly compete with Patel.

But now Patel wants a full liquor license. He hopes to establish a liquor store in the building he recently purchased, 2273 S. Howell Ave., which is adjacent to his grocery business.

The Compass learned that Patel and Singh met with District 14 Alderman Tony Zielinski in December 2011 to discuss their mutual aspirations for licenses. At that meeting, according to both Singh and Patel, Patel agreed to give up the beer license at his grocery. Patel said he didn’t need to sell beer in his grocery if he was operating a liquor store next door.

Consequently Patel applied for a full liquor license and Singh for a beer license. The city’s License Division certified both applications. Singh’s hearing before the committee was scheduled for Jan. 23.

Singh had previously applied for a beer license in 2009 but was blocked by Zielinski, who cited neighborhood opposition and the building’s condition.

This time around, Zielinski said that he’s supporting Singh’s application because of the improvements Singh made to the exterior and interior of his building. In 2011 Singh said he invested about $400,000 to remodel the façade and entry of his grocery store. He painted the exterior of the building, replaced windows, and remodeled and painted the interior.

Singh’s hearing before the Licenses Committee was held Jan. 23. Two people testified in support of A. K. No one appeared at the hearing to oppose his application but Bay View resident Patty Pritchard Thompson, who is campaign treasurer of Zielinski’s opponent Jan Pierce in the upcoming aldermanic election, testified that she was neutral. Thompson expressed concern that Zielinski didn’t hold a public meeting to both inform residents of A. K.’s application and get a read on their disposition.

In response to her testimony, Zielinski asked the committee to hold their vote until the next committee meeting and said that he would hold a public meeting in Bay View about Singh’s application. The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 13 at 11am.

Balwinder Singh, Jesse Singh’s wife, said that Zielinski called her soon after their application was put on hold and assured her that there was no opposition to their application among the Licenses Committee members.

Meanwhile…

Patel’s application for a new liquor store license was certified and published by the License Division Dec. 6, 2011. The city ordinance that governs beer and liquor licenses provides that an applicant must be heard by the Licenses Committee within three cycles of the committee, or within 60 days of the certification.

In an interview with the Compass Jan. 10, Patel alleged that he had been approached by Zielinski who asked Patel to wait until after the spring aldermanic elections to appear before the Licenses Committee.

Fifth District Alderman Jim Bohl, who chairs the Licenses Committee, said that there are exceptions to the 60-day timeframe between certification and an applicant’s hearing. The hearing can be delayed if the applicant requests more time. He said an alderman can also request that the committee postpone a hearing “for one additional cycle” if an alderman states he needs more time to perform due diligence regarding an applicant or application.

In a phone interview Jan. 10, Zielinski denied that he advised Patel to hold off his liquor store license application until after the election. But he said he tried to delay Patel’s hearing. “I told the [Licenses] committee not to schedule Paresh. I told Paresh to withdraw [the application] because of the feedback I’m getting from the community. I don’t support it now. I don’t support it in the future unless business owners like Sarah Jonas of Lulu’s support it.

“I told [Patel] he’s got to convince those people in the area that would be negatively impacted by him. It’s up to those businesses,” Zielinski said, indicating that the disposition of his constituents forms the basis of his support or non-support of a license application.

However, Zielinski added that he is “leaning toward supporting A. K. Food Mart’s application for a beer license” because of the building improvements made by owner Jesse Singh, whom he described as a good business operator.

Zielinski added that Lulu co-owner Sarah Jonas “doesn’t have a problem with A. K. getting the license, so I’m leaning toward A. K., but not Hub.” Jonas’ cafe and bar, 2261-65 S. Howell Ave., are located in the buildings directly north of Patel’s proposed liquor store.

Moments after this interview, Zielinski placed a second call to the Compass. Patel was already conferenced in, creating a three-way call between Zielinski, Patel, and the Compass.

The alderman said that he included Patel in the call because he wanted to clarify or correct the information provided to the Compass by Patel.

Zielinski insisted that what he actually said when he approached Patel was that he was not going to support his application for a liquor license unless Patel gained the approval of nearby business owners.

Patel rejected this version of their conversation and maintained his position, asserting three times during the conference call that Zielinski had indeed told him that he should wait until after the spring election to meet with the Licenses Committee.

Zielinski expressed his incredulity that Patel thought he tried to persuade him to delay.

The following day Patel said that he was not going to request a delay of his hearing and would not wait until after the spring elections.

Patel Goes to India

On Jan. 18, Patel informed the Compass that he intended to withdraw his application for the liquor license. He claimed he was certain that he would be denied the application when he appeared before the committee.

He said that his decision was also motivated by learning that his father, who lives in the United States, needed surgery and preferred to receive medical care in India. Patel said he would accompany his father to India, withdraw his application, “and let the building sit empty.”

Patel said he expected he would be in India for three weeks, which would extend beyond the 60-day time period for his hearing. He claimed that he tried to call the License Division to inform them of his decision but that after “being on hold for an hour and a half,” he gave up. (On Jan. 27, an official of the License Division stated that their phones were not functioning properly for two days and that it was very possible Patel called and was on hold for a long time.)

The License Division said Patel’s application was active and had not been withdrawn as of Jan. 27.

When asked about the status of Patel’s application the same day, Zielinski said Patel had informed him of his impending trip to India and that he was going to request that Licenses delay Patel’s hearing.

Stay tuned.

Zielinski said the public meeting to discuss Singh’s application will be held at the Bay View Library in February. The date was not set at press time.

Hummingbirch offers art and meditation classes on Howell

Two women were brainstorming in South Shore Park last year when they decided there was nothing stopping them from pursuing their dream of opening a business that blended their twin talents of art and meditation. So they did it. Hummingbirch is the result.

Bay View artist Ellen Carr and meditation specialist Nina Pielarz co-own Hummingbirch, a 795-square-foot art and meditation studio now open at 3205 S. Howell Ave., property owned by Henry and Susan Paul of Elm Grove.

Carr and Pielarz found the space last October and spent the last three months of 2011 renovating the interior formerly occupied by Signs & Designs and Dina’s Upholstery. They held an open house last Nov. 11, but their lease officially started Jan. 1.

In an age when schools are cutting art classes and computerization is displacing tactile creative experiences like painting and drawing, Carr said she wants to make art accessible to anyone, not just “artists.” “That’s my main goal: to help people overcome their fear of art,” she said.

Starting this month, Carr offers a basic drawing class Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons. Before the holidays she held a workshop on making your own wrapping paper. She plans others on making your own valentines and repurposing everyday objects.

Pielarz offers drop-in meditation classes Tuesday through Friday in the mornings before work and ongoing meditation classes twice on Wednesdays and also on Friday evenings. She doesn’t focus on one style of meditation but believes meditation serves to help people let go of fear, anger, and addictions, and bring them more peace or a caring attitude.

The pair offer a combination meditation and art class Tuesday evenings. “Not everybody feels that they have the artistic ability. The ability is locked inside,” Pielarz explained. “I will unlock, if I could, the creative side of the people that would join us. When they approach the paper or pen, they will be more peaceful, more in the moment, more free to express themselves freely.”

Carr believes the process of art is more important than the final product. “The process of doing art is very meditative,” she added.

Hummingbirch has a basement workshop. The main Hummingbirch space is also available for rent if someone wants to teach yoga or use it as a spiritual/artistic venue, Carr said.

In the next weeks, Carr plans to add art classes for children. Pielarz plans mediation classes designed for parent and child and for married couples.

They’ve already begun working with the nearby Milwaukee Center for Independence, hosting small group art classes for the developmentally disabled. The cozy setting makes clients feel calm and comfortable. “We’ve had such a beautiful experience,” Carr said. “They just love it because it’s just a few blocks away.”

Carr earned her BFA in drawing and painting at UWM in 1998, then traveled to California where she became exposed to meditation before returning to Bay View in 2001. She said since then she’d been doing art for herself but struggling with part-time jobs, none of which were truly her passion.

Originally from Poland, Pielarz provides Polish-English translation for medical patients at Froedtert Hospital and earned her degree in Russian at UW-Milwaukee. She said she discovered the power of meditation 10 years ago when working through some problems and credits her time at the Mindfulness Practice Center of Milwaukee on Locust as leading her to discover her gift in guiding group meditation. Pielarz is also pursuing Reiki certification.

“Really we want to contribute to the community,” Pielarz said. “Bay View is really open-minded people and we like that.”

To register or for more information contact Ellen Carr at (414) 745-1559 or Nina Pielarz at (414) 625-0327.

The Crossroads, a spiritual store for Kinnickinnic Avenue

This March, a spiritual gift store and wellness center is set to open in the Kinnickinnic Avenue storefront that once housed Apple A Day Massage and more recently the law offices of Divorce Financial Services.

Brett D’Arras, of Bay View, and Bonnie Landsee, of Brookfield, partnered to open their new business, The Crossroads, at 2227 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., the property owned by John Endries Properties LLC.

“We wanted someplace that was going to be inclusive of all faiths, not something exclusively pagan or Wiccan,” said D’Arras, who identified himself as Catholic.

The Crossroads will sell spiritual items like seven-day glass candles, herbs, oils, handmade jewelry, pendulums, statuary, hand-woven fair-trade items, devotional images of religious saints, local art, and boutey, which are Haitian bottles decorated with sequins and beads. Much of their inventory will be sold on consignment, D’Arras said.

Landsee is a certified massage therapist and will offer massage therapy, Reiki, energy work, and alternative healing. She has owned Three Queens Emporium and Healing Traditions, LLC in Waukesha County in recent years and has worked as a telecommunications specialist for AT&T since 1994.

D’Arras has a background in spiritual counseling, paranormal investigations, Tarot card readings, and Lifeline consultations. He said he found himself supplementing his income from a suite of dead-end jobs by doing more and more spiritual consultation on the side, then said he was laid off for no apparent reason working for a wine bar.

He feels that Milwaukee doesn’t really have a spiritual store and hopes to fill a vital niche.

“The businesses that are surviving are the businesses that cater to the needs of the people,” D’Arras said. “When you’re losing your factory job you go to the spiritual store and get a candle because those are the needs you have.”

D’Arras said he was excited about the new Alterra and Dwell Bay View and cited them both as large draws to Bay View. “This area is so diverse and so close-knit and so not like a typical all-white [neighborhood]—there’s a mix of everybody,” he said.

The Crossroads is also open to other practitioners, D’Arras said.

Opening in March: M-F 12-8pm, Sat 10am-8pm, Sun 12-5pm.

www.thecrossroadsbotanica.com.

Public art finalists selected

Forget Epcot—interactive special effects may soon be coming to a bus stop near you.

Two of three finalists competing to design a public art installation for a traffic island at the heart of Bay View have proposed interactive elements that respond to human movement.

An ad-hoc committee gathered by 14th District Alderman Tony Zielinski, chaired by BYO Studio Lounge co-owner Kerry Yandell, on Jan. 20 narrowed the field from the 15 proposals received by the Jan. 6 submission deadline down to three finalists, who will each receive a $1,000 honorarium to build refined scale mockups of their proposals.

Art Stop Competition Committee
Chair: Kerry Yandell, co-owner of BYO Studio Lounge, 2246 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
Marina Dimitrijevic, 4th District Milwaukee County Supervisor
Amy Heart, Milwaukee Shines solar program manager
Laura Ashleigh King, Milwaukee Arts Board
Brian Dranzik, Milwaukee County Transit System
Mike Loughran, City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works
Tom Mallmann
Eric Ponto, Bay View resident
Jason Wedesky, president of the Kinnickinnic Avenue Business Improvement District (BID #44)
Tony Zielinski, 14th District City of Milwaukee Alderman

The committee will interview and provide feedback to the designers prior to a public meeting sometime in April when they will present their proposals to the public, according to Yandell.

The site is the triangular traffic island bound by Howell, Kinnickinnic, and Lincoln avenues. The terms of the committee’s request-for-proposals included integrating a bus shelter into the design, which should “have a strong visual and spatial impact on visitors moving through the district.” The RFP also encouraged alternative energy sources to power effects on site.

An estimated $150,000 will be available for project funding, according to Zielinski and Yandell. In January, Yandell said $80,000 in funding was confirmed, coming from public and private sources. She said the committee is pursuing additional grants.

“We had a lot of great proposals,” Zielinski said. “It was tough [to choose].”

A Riverwest veteran of Nevada’s annual Burning Man festival, an exurban architect teamed with a Bay View expat, and an ex-Milwaukeean who is now an architecture professor in Idaho brainstormed the top three concepts for the Bay View Art Stop.

Bay View Beacon

Although it looks like a three-story lighthouse with a wind turbine and solar panels on top, and an octagonal bus stop underneath, Eric Griswold’s Bay View Beacon is much more, according to his proposal.

“Our specialty…is creating rugged, interactive environments of lights and sound that respond to people entirely by means of invisible sensory beams,” wrote Griswold, the principal designer and managing partner of his business, WellLife Resources LLC, and the Wisconsin regional contact for Burning Man Project.

For his Bay View Beacon, that could mean “light curtains” for the bus shelter walls beneath the lighthouse superstructure. “Imagine strings of translucent bubbles hanging side by side, like beads in a bead curtain…” he wrote, “each ‘bubble’ can light up under computer control at any color or intensity. The net result is something like an animated video screen you can look through.”

Griswold suggested these screens could react to human presences by generating digital “shadows” that would go on to have a life of their own. “Two shadows may shake hands; a shadow may hand another shadow a gift; a shadow may detach and jog around the bus stop, appearing in different panels.”

The site could also emit historical or atmospheric sounds, like the bell of a streetcar or “anomalous weather.”

“There’s a sense of playfulness and interactivity while still being something solid and rugged,” he said of the design. The lighthouse component is meant to be simple, iconic, and lasting—a quality he’s field-tested over 10 summers at the Burning Man temporary city/festival in the Nevada desert, which attracts self-reliant artists and designers from around the world.

“I’ve always been interested in technology and art and culture, which a lot of people think might move in different orbits,” Griswold told the Compass. “What’s really exciting here is the chance to make a really vital and new interactive art piece that I don’t think has been done in Milwaukee.”

Griswold has lived in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood for 25 years, but said he loves Bay View. “If I didn’t live here, I’d live there.”

Synergy

Interactivity is also the hallmark of Synergy, a proposal by Kevin Grabowski and Chris Hewitt that features a dynamically-lit central electrical flame. It’s visually reminiscent of the light atop the Wisconsin Gas Company building but functionally more complex.

The flame would always glow at a low level, but turning hand-powered cranks hidden in seating features and metal trees on the island would ignite different colored effects within.

“As others notice the connection between an individual’s efforts and change in the central glow, the hope is that they will want to see what happens when they contribute their energy to the effort,” Grabowski and Hewitt wrote in their proposal.

Multiple people turning multiple cranks would create still more unique lighting effects not possible without a veritable community of crankers.

“Our concept for the Bay View Art Stop is rooted in this idea of synergy—the group dynamic in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” they wrote.

“We want to snap them out of their lack of interpersonal connection,” Grabowski told the Compass. “People have more friends on Facebook than in real life…What can we do with an art installation that would challenge or invite or trick people into interacting with each other?”

Grabowski said he wants to catalyze impromptu social conversations among isolated people waiting on the island, whether for a bus or with their smartphone and latte. He wants people to engage nearby strangers: “Hey, turn your crank! I want to see what happens.”

The idea is to transform an overlooked “spaghetti junction and a bit of an eyesore” into a playful pseudoforest that reminds people they are human and that humans are social creatures.

Grabowski, national projects director for New Berlin’s Conrad Schmitt Studios, lives in the Town of Vernon, Wis. For the project, he’s teamed with his good friend Hewitt, who lived in Bay View before he moved to Fredonia, Wis. to become an organic farmer.

Urban Posturing

In Urban Posturing, Román Montoto has proposed a futuristic-looking piece of architectural sculpture intended as a landmark.

“The piece really emerged out of understanding the context of this residual island space,” Montoto told the Compass. “That site ends up being the northern gate into Bay View.”

Urban Posturing blends the solidity of concrete with a metal saillike feature that would rise on the triangle’s north end.

“Here the robust concrete foundations establish a sense of permanence and well-rooted constituents while the steel skeletal structure and poly-carbonate scrim are open and optimistic to the future…” Montoto wrote. “This proposal also attempts to celebrate Bay View day, night, and throughout the year, with an extroverted and participatory compositional reference to events such as the South Shore Water Frolics and Fourth of July Parade.”

Montoto left Milwaukee for Chicago in 1999, then joined the University of Idaho in 2004 where he is an associate professor in its College of Art & Architecture’s Architecture and Interior Design program. His brother saw an advertisement in a local Milwaukee paper and informed him of the opportunity.

Montoto recalled biking through Bay View with his brother, heading along Kinnickinnic Avenue to Faust Music to buy music supplies. “It always seemed kind of gray,” Montoto recalled, but now it’s revitalized and people are proud. “The site is a crossroads,” he said. “That excited me—the resurgence of the neighborhood.”

His goal: “Engage the crossroads, engage the residual space, and convey that sense of pride.”

His sculpture swells upwards from south to north. “One space kind of folds into another and it’s very fluid as opposed to a very segregated sense of space,” Montoto said.

He said he was also conscious of how the spaces created by his design would be interacted with over time, during different parts of the day or year.

“It will be interesting to see how people come to engage this space,” he said.

The Process

Committee members met privately at BYO Studio Lounge Jan. 13 to review all the proposals. Then members took proposals home to score them across three categories: design (45 possible points), site considerations (35 points), and budgeting considerations (20 points).

The committee met again Jan. 20 to compare notes and whittle the 15 proposals down to three.

Competition drew 15 creative proposals

In alphabetical order by title, here are the 15 submissions received by Yandell’s committee:

Art Stop by Milwaukee Makerspace
Bay View Beacon by Eric Griswold
The Bay View Tree by Jennifer Espenscheid
Block Party by Celine Farrell
DuProach by Gregory Bird
A Natural Future by Fritz Schipper
Petrie Dish Party by Bilhenry Walker
Plaza by Erik Johnson
Sculptural Kiosk by Todd Burton
Synergy by Kevin Grabowski and Chris Hewitt
Transit Waters by Greg Moerner
Untitled by Anthony Conzoner
Urban Intervention by Nathan Van Zuidam &  Stephen Vebber
Urban Posturing by Román Montoto
Utility Forrest by Kyle Thompson

A public meeting was scheduled for 6:30pm at Bay View High School’s Dietrich Auditorium on March 8, but Yandell later informed the Compass that finalists wanted more time to respond to committee feedback, and so the committee is delaying the public meeting until April. Zielinski said he wants public comment to be a consideration, but ultimately the committee will choose who wins the contract.

Zielinski said that Helios Solar Works will donate solar panels, Giuffre Brothers will provide a crane for installation free of charge, and Milwaukee Forge will donate steel.

Dimitrijevic was seeking a $120,000 federal transportation grant that would replace the $50,000 committed by the county.

Current Art Stop Funding Sources
$50,000 – Milwaukee County
$15,000 – Milwaukee Arts Board
$5,000 – City of Milwaukee’s Office of Environmental Sustainability
$5,000 – Kinnickinnic Avenue Business Improvement District (BID #44)
$5,000 – Paresh Patel

Feb. 1 is Landscape Pesticide Advance Notice Registry deadline—warning that pesticides to be used near you

Wednesday, Feb. 1 is the deadline for Wisconsin’s homeowners and renters to join the Landscape Pesticide Advance Notice Registry with the new on-line registration system.

2010 revisions to Milwaukee’s ordinances governing licensing task force

4th District County Supervisor Dimitrijevic will face challenger

Bay View resident Bill Buresh collected enough signatures to be on the ballot of  the February primary and April election for Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. He is challenging  County Board 4th District incumbent Marina Dimitrijevic.

Dimitrijevic was elected 4th District Supervisor in 2004 and was re-elected to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors in 2008. She possesses the distinction of being the youngest woman to be elected to the County Board at age of 22.

To see all the candidates vying for office in the upcoming primary and election see:

http://county.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/Groups/cntyElectCommission/2012SpringCandidateFilings.pdf

Reminder: county legislation accessible online

Milwaukee County legislation is now publicly viewable online:

county.milwaukee.gov/CLIC

Sven’s Café downtown expansion

Steve Goretzko, owner of Sven’s European Café, 2699 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in Bay View, is opening a second café downtown in the former Steamer’s Coffee, 624 N. Water St. (see map)

Steamer’s Coffee was created by Peter Renner (Renner Architects, Milwaukee) in 2005 and operated by his wife Mary Renner. It was purchased by E.L.K., LLC (Kevin Riordan and two partners) in 2007. It closed last October.

Goretzko had been looking for a second location for  several years but settled on downtown Milwaukee, where he eyes thousands of potential customers. “It’s the busiest corner in Wisconsin because of the businesses around there,” Goretzko said. “There are 13,000 workers down there. Being from Berlin, Germany [as I am], you like a lot of foot traffic and hustle and bustle.”

The new café has 2,300 square feet that Goretzko said seats 60. The Bay View café seats 50 in the 1,300 square-foot-space. The downtown café doesn’t include a meeting room but proffers a large table that will seat 9-10 people, according to Goretzko.

Goretzko said he’s replicating the Bay View café’s name, menu, eclectic decor, and the menu that includes a selection of breakfast and lunch items; Sven’s coffee (he roasts his own); and a large selection of tea, pastries, and chocolate.

The downtown café is scheduled to open March 1 and will operate M-F, 6:30am-3pm. Goretzko projects that he will employ four full-time and six part-time people at the new location.

District 14 aldermanic candidates square off Feb. 7

The Bay View Compass and Bay View Neighborhood Association will host a candidate forum 7-9pm Tuesday, Feb. 7 at Humboldt Park School. (see map)

Confirmed guests include the candidates vying to represent the city’s 14th Aldermanic District, incumbent Tony Zielinski and challenger Jan Pierce, plus incumbent Milwaukee County Supervisors Marina Dimitrijevic and Jason Haas, for the Fourth and 14th districts respectively.

The forum will be moderated by the League of Women Voters. The event is free and open to the public. Bring your questions for the candidates or email them in advance to editor@bayviewcompass.com, subject line: FORUM.

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