Milwaukee Bucks President Peter Feigin said the team’s new arena in downtown Milwaukee could break ground in October or November. The Assembly voted to approve a $250 million funding bill last week.
“It’s really remarkable to see the benefit to the state and see both parties get together and put together a very large private-public partnership,” Feigin said on “UpFront with Mike Gousha,” produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com.
According to Feigin, the franchise aims to open the new arena in late 2017. He said the timetable depends on gaining approval of key aspects of the plan from the city’s Common Council in early September.
He said the ancillary development around the arena will include a practice facility, retail space, and parking in the first year of construction, and a focus on residential expansion in the second year.
“The goal here is … to build a district where people actually live, work, and play,” Feigin said. “This cannot be an arena on an island; this has to be the center point of where people actually live.”
In addition to connecting to local residents, Feigin said the Bucks leadership will cultivate statewide support for the team. The strategy will include a partnership with UW-Madison’s basketball program.
”This development and this partnership is much more than the Bucks,” Feigin said. “It’s about transforming a large portion of downtown Milwaukee, generating revenue for the state of Wisconsin.”
The Bucks spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying the Capitol in the first half of the year as the team pushed for public financing to cover half of a new $500 million arena.
It was a dramatic upswing in activity for the team. The Bucks registered to lobby in 2013-14 but reported no effort. The team wasn’t even registered to lobby the Capitol in the previous decade.
But it put together a lobbying team that included Feigin and Vice President Robert Cook along with: former Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, longtime lobbyist Eric Petersen and former Dem legislative aide Bryan Brooks.
Along with the Bucks, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce put in a significant effort on the arena. The group reported 185 hours on the budget topic, about 30 percent of its overall effort for the six-month period.
Combined, the Bucks and MMAC accounted for 393 of the 552 hours spent lobbying the arena proposal in the first half of the year.
Others that registered work on the topic included: the Wisconsin Restaurant Association (103 hours), the Milwaukee Area Technical College (22), NAIOP Wisconsin (18) and the Milwaukee Brewers (16), according to a summary of lobbying efforts on budget subjects.
