Team Olson sputters as Showtime news spreads
These past few days have been amazing to watch if you've been on Facebook since the news of Showtime Cinema's downgrade to a value theater hit the presses. This, coupled with the Oak Creek-themed "streetscaping" on 27th Street being unveiled over the past month has hit Mayor Olson pretty hard. Dare one say, if both of these happened a few days before the election, Franklin either would have had a Mayor Basil Ryan, or an election where Olson's lead would have been that much smaller.
Ryan's centerpiece of his campaign was Olson's failure to seemingly inspire new economic development in Franklin, and pointed to its struggling business areas as examples of poor leadership from the Mayor's office. Needless to say, Franklin's hometown cinema getting a downgrade and Olson's pet project - the 27th Street Corridor - turning out for the moment to be a D-grade attempt to resemble Historic 41's work just to the north, would have bolstered Ryan's argument.
But I digress.
Seeing all of this news, coupled with the announcement of Sears departing Southridge Mall in the Fall (the second anchor to announce its departure for this upcoming season), Olson and his pals on Facebook had to come up with something to respond to all of this. After all, in the case of Southridge, the mall was viewed by Olson in numerous talks with constituents and publicly as the chief reason for Franklin not getting any retailers or dining options - not the lack of leadership that some claimed. As Greenfield and Oak Creek go gangbusters though with new mixed use retail developments, with Greenfield's 84South yanking Kohl's from the big bad shopping giant Olson feared, Franklin is still rocking a nice form of limbo for the time being.
The arguments made so far?
In the case of Showtime, FT read comments from folks of the O Patrol (labeled such for being vehemently behind Olson during the Spring, 2017 Elections) that went anywhere from Showtime never receiving their business anyways, to the theater being located in the middle of nowhere, and of course the obvious "Marcus is moving primary SW ops to the new BistroPlex at Southridge" argument. That also helps try putting a band-aid on Olson's "Southridge kills retail opportunities in Franklin" argument from the campaign season. And then, the gem from Mayor Olson himself, after posting an outdated graph highlighting a decreasing number of movie theater-goers from 2006-2015,
"the theater is a functioning business that has made a decision on how they're going to run the business. I'm still trying to think of anything the city could do to influence their decision. I (we) always encourage people to support local businesses by spending their money with them."
Let's be frank. It's a bad response. First, to respond to this underneath FT's article on Facebook, which highlighted the city (and Olson - being an alderman of the 1st District and thus part of the Civic Center (CC) District for most of the period from conception to present-day)'s failing to implement the vision of the CC District is a gem. Let's speak directly to the Mayor on this - if you and fellow city leaders would have taken anything above the laid-back approach to this area, we might not be having this conversation today. The argument of the theater being located in an area with nothing is a solid one, but one that shouldn't have happened. When the theater was proposed and built, Franklin's CC District plans were only a few years old. With a strong leadership from either the Mayor's office or, dare I say, one or more of the aldermen at the time, Hwy 100 and Loomis could have developed into something - more shops, more offices, more living and more dining choices for residents.
Showtime's location isn't that horrendous - being along Loomis is guaranteed a steady traffic flow as Milwaukee's SW exurbs (Wind Lake, Waterford) continue to grow and people travel to and from the city for major shopping or working needs. Loomis Road is their primary route. What was missing was a destination that Showtime could have been an auxiliary anchor to. With years turning into over a decade, it's no surprise Marcus saw no viability or leadership coming from Franklin to make the lands around Showtime worthwhile for the company to invest further in it, so where did they go? Greendale. Greendale - which has been pumping money into Southridge over the past 5 years and will fight tooth-and-nail to keep the mall from turning into what Northridge became. Again, leadership wins out. I'm curious to see how village leadership handles and guides the transformation of the north wing of the mall. But more discussion on that in a future post.
FT looks forward to Team Olson, including the Mayor himself, to explain away how Hwy 100 & Loomis HAD options that simply never came to fruition - most recently with the failed Meijer proposed for the SE corner. But as we've seen, even with the current Ballpark Commons proposal chugging along, the city refuses to take strong passionate leadership on these visions or ideas unless it contains a bunch of rectangular warehouse boxes on the SW corner of 27th and Oakwood Road.
And THAT is what residents should be upset about.