NM did you see Rockwell is building their new location in New Berlin? Not Downtown and not close to the city. Why? Downtown is dead and only a fool would continue to build there. Add Rockwell to the long list that keeps moving out of the city as NM wants to move in.
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@4vv There is a great Pakistani place a few blocks away, i forget the name
@OP Guys - this conversation keeps degrading. Facts are Franklin is winding down to be replaced by a Costco that the neighborhood needs. Peeps are coming DT to where $500M was just invested in a new building. That will be the sole WI campus just as it has been for decades. Every locale has its pros/cons. The company has a huge financial stake in the ground in downtown MKE for well past all of our lifetimes reading this thread.
@64p If you’re afraid to go to your company’s HQ, you’re free to find a new job. That’s what is allowed in our free country.
Even the far left governor of WI is publicly saying that he is considering sending the national guard into Milwaukee because the city is so dangerous and violent. This is where you want to require your employees to be NM????
The city of Milwaukee is so bad there is a resolution before the city council right now to pay an incentive boost just to get city employees to live in the city. This is how bad it’s gotten folks. Does NM intend to do the same? Once again it is crystal clear that no one wants anything to do with the city. Not even city employees.
@60d - It that is true, then turn over the files and case closed. The fact is that is not true and the discriminatory practices are now front and center. The interview and hiring quotas are illegal and it’s finally being addressed. Promotions are shady and questionable as well. Can’t wait for the final report and to see justice served.
@5yg You know it’s a sad day when a white dude files a suit because a woman gets a job ahead of him. Look at the make up of the leadership of the company. White guys still hold the majority of higher level roles. There is no there there. Sorry it isn’t 1950 or even 1990 anymore.
You know it’s a sad day when we have had more success getting the Epstein files released than we have getting NM to comply with a lawful EEOC subpoena. We have seen more of the Epstein files than we have of the NM DEI policies. Employees, clients, and the field should be outraged. What are they hiding??
West Bend Mutual did choose West Bend. In 1894.
NM chose Milwaukee quite a while before that. They actually moved from Janesville to Milwaukee.
So considering how each company chose their HQ location that long ago, you should be well prepared for it.
Too bad the senile orange president just managed to jack up your gas prices. I'm sure you think it's totally worth it as long as he did something about DEI. Get ready to pay a lot more to commute to downtown - at least until he's long gone.
The company you work for -- Northwestern Mutual -- is headquartered in downtown Milwaukee. It has been for many decades. To include at the time when 100% of current employees joined the company. Several years ago the company built a state of the art new office tower to further consolidate operations to downtown Milwaukee. Suffice to say, NM ain't moving to the suburbs. Again, 9 out of 10 bellyachers who complain about working in downtown Milwaukee would be long-term unemployed if not for their current job at NM. So shut up and be grateful. Either that or retire, buy a cr-p ton of lottery tickets or transition to living in a van down by the river in the suburbs given that you no longer will be gainfully employed to afford current residence.
99% of people would choose West be-doverdowntown Milwaukee any day. In fact, West Bend Mutual did. Downtown Milwaukee is failing faster than a LearnVest acquisition. Keep listening to the far left and DEI.
@5qk Meanwhile a West Bend native is arrested at a Girl Scout camp with possession of weed and loaded we-pons after a call for domestic incident, a guy is ki-led by Waukesha sheriffs after a high speed chase and pulling out a we-pon, and the Menomonee Falls police are looking for a hit and run driver. That’s just today’s headlines. Crime is not limited to downtown Milwaukee.
A bunch of racist, dull-witted suburbanites who should bow down and thank NM every day that they still inexplicably have a JOB despite having the relevancy and effectiveness of Tom Symkowski of Office Space. Hop in your decrepit minivan and drive your a$$ to the downtown office to do your typical 15 minutes of daily work and gorge on the free lunch. The alternative for 9 out of 10 of you whiner and complainers is long-term unemployment.
Milwaukee also made national news for a school bus that crashed after being caught in g-n crossfire. Really nice and safe city. I don’t blame any employees for wanting to avoid downtown or any part of the city.
Yeah, a shooting 13 blocks and approximately one mile away from NM at 1:30am outside bars seems super relevant.
Meanwhile 3 people died of boredom in Franklin over the weekend.
You would have likely never come within 10 miles of NM had you known what was going down at Victor's every weekend just 4 blocks away.
More deadly shootings just blocks from the campus. This thread will serve as a reminder that there were plenty of warnings and all were ignored. It’s only a matter of time before the unthinkable happens.
Of course, Franklin doen't have as much crime as downtown Milwaukee. That wasn't my point.
You can’t possibly think Franklin is more crime ridden than downtown?????
Gesu is on the western edge of downtown. The vandalism was supposedly done by a person with mental health issues. This occurs in people who live, work and hang-out in Franklin. Stop using this type of situation to justify your desire to stay in Franklin.
How about being concerned about mental health issues & crime in all areas?
A church, yes a church, was broken into and heavily damaged in a vandalism case downtown. Please remind me why anyone would ever want to live or work there.
@4vv+1kh7ry39d Bollywood Grill on Jackson
Are there any good Indian restaurants near to Milwaukee NM building? I’m from franklin. Haven’t been to Milwaukee much. Just planning to visit beach and near by attractions in Milwaukee.
Oops, 9/11, typo.
@3gs The land might’ve been relatively cheap but the reason Franklin was built was for people redundancy after realizing after 8/11 that employees shouldn’t all be concentrated in one place. They are nice buildings, I was there for 5 years before my team was moved downtown, I enjoyed working there. I don’t know who would purchase those buildings though, but NM did get a nice chunk of change for selling prairie land to Costco plus NM owns the large open land directly east of 27th which is currently for sale.
Target HQ remains downtown Minneapolis at Target Plaza. During COVID they folded up the former City Center space, but they are not, have not, and will not move their HQ out of downtown Minneapolis.
And no matter where the Target employees work, they seem to continue to be able to figure out where to park all by themselves.
The only reason Franklin was built was because it was CHEAP. Why? It's Franklin, and the place absolutely svcks. The local government showered NM with all sorts of freebies because they were overjoyed that something other than a used car lot, fleabag hotel (hourly rates available) or big box store was even considering building something in that endless landscape of sadness.
Prior to NM the only economic activity happening in Franklin was one dollar at a time at OTB.
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@3cp My bad, you had pointed out EZ was CEO (ED was a typo). Agreed, he was by far a much better CEO, he surrounded himself with smart people instead of JES’s yes-men and yes-women and the dolts from LV who only knew how to poorly run a small startup. JES had an ego the size of the tower, and unlike EZ we never hear of his personal philanthropy to the community even though JES’s salary was almost 3x EZ’s (EZ funded a floor at Children’s Hospital, it’s named after his wife and him).
@3cp FALSE! Franklin was primarily built to be an employee DR site, after 9/11 it was realized employees were all concentrated in downtown MKE so Franklin allowed for splitting up employees who perform critical operations like trading. WFH was virtually non-existent back then but today is used for employee redundancy. The secondary reasons were to accommodate company growth and to own NM’s IT disaster recovery site instead of using an IBM hot site for DR (downtown became the backup site with Franklin the primary). This was before clouds. Today’s world is different.
Downtown is more centralized, employees living in Mequon and Menominee Falls weren’t thrilled about working in Franklin plus NM gets tax incentives.
BTW ED was CEO at the time, not JES
Franklin was never meant as a backup or disaster recovery site unless you mean the disaster known as downtown Milwaukee. Franklin was built to handle the company growth and expansion since there is nowhere to build, park, or put people downtown. Franklin had plans for 5 buildings and several more parking structures to accommodate everyone. Calling Franklin a backup site is just a line of BS from JES who tries to outshine EZ who was a much better CEO. The leaders of the past were better at strategically thinking and planning for the future. They would never spend $1B on a Mickey Mouse startup that cost the company 3,000+ jobs in the form of layoffs. All eyes are on you TG.
@2p8 I bet you're fat
The Franklin campus had nothing to do with NM caring about their employees. It was built as a disaster recovery site which is no longer needed. I remember how employees complained about the commute once they no longer had free shuttle service from downtown to Franklin. That 'commuter' service hijacked employees who were forced to go to Franklin for in-person meetings. Technology has changed the entire landscape.
Target stores just paid $110M to get out of downtown Minneapolis and move their corporate headquarters out of the city. Another sign of companies moving out of blue cities and heading for safer ground. I guess NM prefers the dangerous city full of crime, DEI, and taxes.
Franklin doesn’t have or need 3 armed police officers patrolling the lobby at all times like downtown. Enough said.
@2dk I ain't worried about it, one thing you can count on is there is always some crying.
@2be You must not have been around to hear the gripes and discontent when Franklin opened and all the people were complaining about about how far away it was—doubled their commute times, couldn’t take the bus, etc. Change is hard. We’ll all be ok.
I have never expected my employer to figure out my parking problems. I chose to work for a company with a downtown HQ and knew what that meant for me. There are options, including public transport, cheaper lots that mean a walk, closer lots that are more expensive. There’s also an option to work somewhere else. But at the end of the day, my choices and my responsibility.
@295 Does this surprise you (or anyone here) at all? They have their own tech support team too. Let the remaining employees suffer with offshore. They put Franklin where they did years ago because they cared about the employees at one point. That was a long time ago!
SLT receives black car service each day from their offices to the tower, so they don't have to worry about parking, and trustees have their own area of the parking structure.
Yeah, parking anywhere downtown is difficult. What I think the ridiculous part is is that NM owns how much land and yet they can't properly plan for parking for employees and charge a sizable amount for using said spaces. They could have added more parking spaces to the existing structure, or added parking to the tower during campus planning, but instead they are continuing to expand the number of employees working downtown without taking into consideration the impact on commutes and parking.
Adults that can’t figure out how to park was also what I was thinking.
I used to park on the street for many years and walk a few blocks in. No parking costs. If you do a little critical thinking you can find free options or cheap options. Try thinking outside the box peeps.
Adults that can't figure out where to park. Wow.