Look to your right and you will spot a massive glass-fronted arena capped with a sweeping, bronze-colored curved roof and supported by bold white V-shaped structural pillars along the side. This is Fiserv Forum.
To really understand this building, you have to look at the lineage of arenas in this town. We passed the Panther Arena earlier, which used to be the famous MECCA arena. That was replaced in 1988 by the Bradley Center. And by 2018, the Bradley Center was deemed too old, so it was demolished to make way for this. Fiserv Forum is the ultimate modern symbol of this city tearing down the old to build the new.
The push for this place started when former Bucks owner and United States Senator Herb Kohl proposed building a replacement for the Bradley Center. The NBA had flat out threatened to move the team to Las Vegas or Seattle if Milwaukee did not build a state-of-the-art facility. So, the city scrambled.
Of course, building a world-class arena takes serious cash. The total construction cost was 524 million dollars, and the taxpayers were handed a 250 million dollar burden to make it happen. The city even sold the downtown land to the team for exactly one dollar. You might remember the fierce protests we talked about earlier at the Marcus Center, where citizens demanded public money be spent on housing instead of civic monuments. That exact same debate echoed here. People argued endlessly over who really benefits from these monumental projects.
But whether you supported the funding or not, the result is undeniable. The architects designed that sweeping roof to evoke the waves of Lake Michigan. And that massive glass facade is actually a pioneer in conservation. It is the world's first bird-friendly sports arena. The glass is embedded with microscopic ceramic patterns, a process known as fritting, which makes the transparent glass look like a solid barrier to migrating birds so they do not fly into it.
This venue was designed to be the glittering crown jewel for the 2020 Democratic National Convention. But as we discussed earlier, the pandemic hit, and those plans were drastically downsized and moved.
Instead, that same year, the plaza right in front of you became the epicenter of a very different kind of civic action. Following a police shooting in nearby Kenosha, the plaza transformed into a gathering space for racial justice protests. Inside the NBA bubble in Florida, the Bucks players launched a wildcat strike, which is an unplanned, sudden work stoppage, refusing to play a playoff game until they could demand systemic changes from Wisconsin politicians.
A year later, this exact same space hosted one of the largest outdoor watch parties in American sports history. Sixty-five thousand people jammed into the surrounding streets to watch the Bucks win their first championship in fifty years.
That is the true story of Milwaukee. It is a city of constant transformation, built on intense public debate, heavy investments, and a relentless drive to reinvent itself. Thank you for walking these streets with me.
