A surprisingly divisive parking lot
Plan Commission and Common Council debate medical center's proposed parking lot on Watertown Plank Rd.
The current Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office is in a previously-abandoned, currently-crumbling, and persistently-smelly hospital that former Medical Examiner Brian Peterson, in an article for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said made it difficult to recruit new forensic pathologists.
“People just don't appreciate the cockroaches and the limited space and the crumbling infrastructure and all that,” he said. “It's frankly unpleasant. When you can walk into our front lobby and smell decomposed bodies on a lot of days, that's just not good.”
In September, 2022, Gov. Tony Evers allocated $20 million in state funding for a new Center for Forensic Science and Protective Medicine complex in Wauwatosa’s Milwaukee Regional Medical Center (MRMC) campus. It will house not only the Medical Examiner’s office, but also the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management and the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Milwaukee Crime Lab.
The new complex, along with a large parking structure being built by Froedtert, would occupy a portion of the 90-acre plot of land west of 92nd Street from Watertown Plank Road to Wisconsin Avenue and that was purchased by the medical center from the county several years ago.
On April 10th, during a meeting of the Plan Commission, Matt Wade, a representative from Children’s Hospital, requested a conditional use permit to construct a parking lot at 9201 Watertown Plank Road, because:
For us to proceed with the development that we’re talking about in the relatively near future, Froedtert needs a big piece of land and the Forensic Science building needs a big piece of land. Both of which are on an existing parking lot. So we’re losing 1,200 spots to create those two projects, one of which is a 2,300 car parking deck that Froedtert is going to be building. […] But we have to find a home for these 1,200 spaces1 in the interim.