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Originally Posted by llamaorama
I'm not really qualified to have this opinion other than my time hanging around this site, but I'm pretty sure skyscraper construction does not directly correlate with business activity or wealth. I mean sure, growing and prosperous cities have more development, duh, but then look at Phoenix or Orlando and then compare those places with Chicago. Also, I've noticed that high rise construction comes in waves. Few cities build just one new tall building downtown and that's it. Instead some cities have minimal construction and then one building seems to open the door for more. That sets a precedent where a city is now a "high rise" city. It's like proving that high rise residential breaks a barrier, and soon there's more, a lot more, and they just get taller and taller until the economic cycle ends and things reset. At the end of the day even a very big tower has maybe 300 people in, a rounding error of a percent of a couple million in a metro area, so its not like you need major growth, just interest and desire.
So I'd name Milwaukee, moreso than Minneapolis or any others. Milwaukee has always built at least some tall buildings including residential ones in every decade despite being economically and demographically in the pits and a third-rate metro. There are few other cities comparable to Milwaukee in size that have so many mid-rise apartments and condos in an established neighborhood like going north of downtown to UWM.
To me what that says is developers in Milwaukee embrace taller construction, the downtown and lakefront of the city is comparatively desirable even other parts of it are rough and in decline, and these areas continue to have interest. So, the city doesn't even necessary need a major boom, its just random that some point a developer with sufficient capital could put up a big condo tower in an area where there is proven desire for high rise living.
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I went with Minneapolis because they seem to have the corporate (and residential) culture for skyscrapers.
But I get you--I, too, don't have any good argument for Milwaukee, but just watching the return of high rise development to Milwaukee in the last few years, there seems to be momentum for something really tall. I've got a gut feeling that they're going to put up a 700'+ tower, but take that for what it is.
While obviously smaller, it has been pointed out on this forum before that Milwaukee is something of a mini-Chicago in terms of its lakefront-and-river location, with similar land uses (mostly office downtown, high-rise residential along the shore north of downtown). I don't think a new 700-footer in Milwaukee would only be residential though--I'd expect it would be mixed residential-office or perhaps even residential-hotel-office. After COVID is tamed, of course.