June 5, 2024
By Lane Kimble
MILWAUKEE — The south-facing windows in HNTB’s 20th-floor meeting room provide a great view of downtown Milwaukee. You can see high-rises, the Third Ward, freeways, the Hoan Bridge, and the expanse of Lake Michigan.
It was a fitting place for the WTBA Board of Directors to meet.
“You can see half the projects that you’ve help build and we’ve helped design over the last fifty years and hopefully for the next fifty years,” HNTB Wisconsin Office Leader Ashley Booth told the WTBA Board of Directors.
Two of those projects in particular were of note on Tuesday: I-94 East-West and I-794. HNTB staffers updated Board members on both during the meeting.
Of the two, I-94 East-West is the closest to beginning, HNTB West Leg Project Manager Andy Kowske said.
The tentative let schedule on the approximately $1.5 billion project includes two major bid opportunities in September 2025. Those include the project’s west leg (with its eight bridges) and the Early East Leg (which is mainly the 27th Street bridge, retaining walls, and local road.)
The meat and potatoes of the 3.5-mile freeway expansion, though, comes much later. The newly designed Stadium Interchange – in front of American Family Field – will actually cut down on bridges, take up a smaller footprint, and allow for better drainage while saving about $100 million when it’s potentially let in 2029.
“I think the (opposing) narrative is that I-94 East-West is all about putting more concrete out there. It’s more lanes, more traffic,” Kowske said, referring to groups wanting to keep the freeway at six lanes.
“In reality, you’re taking away concrete, you’re taking away flyover ramps. We’re having a much more compact design. It actually takes up less land than the existing interchange… so, really good change.”
WisDOT will hold public meetings on June 25 and 26 in Milwaukee. Kowske says there will be a contractor workshop on the project in late summer or fall 2024.
Still juggling several options for I-794
As the East-West project enters final design stages, its adjacent partner is far from reaching that point.
I-794 Project Manager T.J. Dougherty walked the Board through HNTB’s creative process in designing options to repair, replace, or remove the freeway all together.
Vocal groups in Milwaukee have been calling for its demolition, arguing it would better connect downtown and the Third Ward while opening valuable real estate to development. Opponents fear extreme congestion and cutting off growing communities to the south, which use the freeway to attract businesses.
“There’s that balancing of traffic operations, safety, public feedback, just the general pedestrian experience, the people that are using it every day,” Dougherty said. “It’s something that’s very important to us here.”
HNTB views the Lake Exchange study as a chance to fix some limitations and design flaws, regardless of what alternative WisDOT ultimately recommends. That decision should come sometime in the next year.
