Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
WWMN Interview: Teddy Nykiel from the Milwaukee Business Journal on Live Events During the RNC, Top Chef, and More! 6-23-24
It's time to check in on our Tri County contracting hotline with Teddy Michael from the Milwaukee Business Journal and Teddy it is now what only about three weeks away the RNC and national media they've been scouting they're announcing their locations where they're going to be doing their broadcasts and what have we learned. Yeah it's crazy how fast it's coming up and yeah every day it seems like we're getting more details on specifics so Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart will be broadcasting from the Marcus Center and their show will be on July 18th which is the last night of the convention and then Fox News Network will be broadcasting from Gather which is the space above Good City Brewing in the Deer District near Pfizer Forum and they are going to create a set at that location and they'll be hosting multiple shows during the convention so those are kind of the latest media announcements we received this week. The Daily Show I guess it's all four shows that week are going to be broadcasting but John Stewart will be doing a live show on that Thursday and people can get tickets for these. Yeah I was surprised to see that. Apparently anyone can attend if they're interested so that's a really cool opportunity. Well speaking of TV Top Chef had its finale on Wednesday night and they named a winner it was not Dan Jacobs but still this show has meant a lot to the area. Yeah I mean we've always been covering this all season because this season has been highlighting not only local chef but also local locations and you know Wisconsin food traditions and things like that. So Dan Jacobs has been in the running all season. He's the co-owner of Dan Dan Restaurant and Third Ward. He did not win but he did finish in the Top 3 so I think we're happy with that. He was a runner-up. The winner of this season was Danny Garcia from New York but I didn't realize apparently Dan Jacobs has auditioned for the show 11 times and so it's exciting for him that he finally you know obviously was able to be on the show and did so well making it to the Top 3. I couldn't believe it when he said that he had auditioned 11 times. Right I mean this is the 21st season so he's auditioned for half the season basically. Talk about a dream come true but the good news is this is really put a spotlight on the restaurant scene in the city. Absolutely and right and personally you know he has a rare progressive disease neuromuscular that he was able to kind of shine a light on as well and kind of highlight being successfully even when you're differently able to just a great story all around. Oh I think we'll be hearing a lot more from and about Dan Jacobs. Alright let's turn our attention to Racine and Mount Pleasant where they've got kind of a bruaha ha going on and it relates to Foxconn and Microsoft. What's all this about? Okay so this is a really interesting situation so the city of Racine that supplies water to the village of Mount Pleasant it has for 20 years but with the Foxconn situation several years ago they had agreed to extend water to the Foxconn site as well. Now that obviously as we've been talking about Foxconn has scaled back its plans and Microsoft in its place is developing a large data center there but now Racine is saying we actually need to renegotiate this water agreement because we're not getting the economic benefits we thought we would with all the jobs that Foxconn had promised you know there's not as many jobs with Microsoft but Mount Pleasant is saying that Racine is withholding water service and not doing its side of the deal not approving agreements to extend water to what is now the Microsoft site so they've been in this dispute they both have their sides and you know a little bit locked in on moving forward but as of this week we're having a private meeting to kind of start discussing some of these issues so it'll definitely be an ongoing story I think it's kind of early in the resolution process but we will definitely be following to see what continues to shake out there obviously it's a very key site for the region and you need water for a data center it almost sounds like a scene out of a movie where one community is withholding water from another she kept it away yeah and of course yeah we don't get too much into the politics here at the business journal but I think there is some political factors as well you know for example the village president is running for state office so I think there's a lot of dynamics with this one that are very interesting I think you might be on to something there all right let's talk about the dynamics of Southridge mall they've been talking about redevelopment for a while but they've just introduced a new concept yeah so the developer that is slated to redevelop this is a former Boston store at Southridge mall in Greendale and the developer that did the couture downtown is developing this so Barrett low visionary development they in 2021 released a plan that was gonna have up to almost 800 apartments and 50,000 square feet of retail but there's been you know numerous disputes related to other owners of different portions of the mall that has kind of held up this process so now three years later they released a new plan that is a bit smaller so it's 675 apartments so still a lot but not that 800 that we were previously looking at and then 20,000 square feet of retail so about half the retail space they said the changes are related to kind of addressing some of the concerns of the other mall tenants so I think it's kind of related to resolving the dispute that has held up this development but it's still an early concept the village does still need to approve the plan before they can move forward so we'll see if this is the plan that ends up moving forward and coming to fruition on that former Boston store site finally Teddy the last location of a popular area restaurant has closed who are we talking about we're talking about Flannery so many people might know it from the downtown Milwaukee location which is near Cathedral Square that closed last year but the restaurant was still operating in Grafton at the Fire Ridge Golf Club but as of this week there's new ownership at the golf club and they are no longer having Flannery's operated so they're gonna operate their own restaurant out of the golf club site and Flannery's by all accounts it seems like they've fully closed now with that last location now closed so we are waiting to see their their former building in downtown Milwaukee is still vacant but it's planned to be a new restaurant called People's Park which also has a location in a walk a shot so that's what is set to replace the downtown Milwaukee Flannery well as always I know you are keeping your ear to the ground to hear what's going next at the Milwaukee Business Journal Teddy Nykel thanks for joining us today thanks