With a scheduled opening about eight months away, Milwaukee County hosted a tour of the new Marcia P. Coggs Health & Human Services Center currently under construction at 1230 W. Cherry St. in the King Park neighborhood on Friday.
The project is being built with a $32 million contribution from the Biden-Harris administration’s American Rescue Plan Act funding.
Ground was broken on the four-story, 60,000-square-foot facility last October. It will serve as a replacement for the current Coggs Center, which occupies a former Schuster’s store a block south.
That building will be sold to developer Gorman & Co., which will convert the structure into about 65 affordable apartments with a small cafe and commercial space for Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Services.
You can read a history of that property in this Urban Spelunking story.
Just north of the new building is the County’s Mental Health Emergency Center (MHEC), at 1525 N. 12th St.
“This first floor that you'll see today is really how we're going to do our ‘no wrong door’ (approach),” said Shakita LaGrant-McClain, the director of health and human services for Milwaukee County at Friday’s tour. “‘No wrong door’ means that when people walk through this door, we're going to be able to connect them to all the services that we have, not just in DHHS, but also with our providers also across our county.
“We're going to make sure that every person that walks in here, we treat them with dignity and we treat them with respect and that we wrap services around them. No matter if it's a child, no matter if it's an older adult, no matter if it's an individual with disability, this will be the place that we will deliver health and human services.”
The first floor of the building, which has a large triangular central atrium lit from above by a striking skylight, will have a family waiting area, a large reception desk and area, meeting rooms and more.
A covered area outside the main entrance will allow visitors to be dropped off right at the door.
The upper floors will houses offices.
Among the services that will be provided on-site are aging and disabilities resource center, crisis response, housing services, child support services, veterans’ services, behavioral health services, energy assistance and much more.
Also on the main floor, with its own entrance on 13th Street, but also accessible from the main lobby will be an 8,000-square-foot space for the NourishMKE food pantry, which will have direct access to the loading dock and will also have a large walk-in cooler.
“It's not only that it's just more space, it's brand new space,” said NourishMKE Executive Director Valerie MacMillan. “We've never been in brand new space before. We’ll have windows. To me that allows us to add layers of dignity into the work that we're doing.
“We’re trying to create more of a grocery store model that destigmatizes the process of receiving food from the food pantry. But then also being able to have office space for our staff to have a nice clean space to be working in. It's really going to be transformative.”
The cooler, said MacMillan, was funded through donations and is expected to be installed by Fein Brothers by the end of October.
LaGrant-McClain said that research showed that more than 70 percent of people who were using DHHS services were located within a 10-minute walk of the site of the new building. LaGrant-McClain also noted that county is working to 120 homes in the surrounding neighborhood.
“We want to meet people where they are,” she said. “Meet their basic needs, make sure they're getting what they need, and then wrap in those services around them. This is just not bricks and mortar, we are investing in this community, a community that has not been invested in for so long.”
The building was designed by Engberg Anderson Architects and is being constructed by JP Cullen.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
