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The Summer
Soulstice Music Festival, a block party along North Avenue,
will be held June 24, while the East Side Open Market starts
its 16-week run in June.
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Though former Speaker of the House Tip
O’Neill coined the phrase "all politics is local,"
Wauwatosa’s Jim Plaisted lives it.
As executive director of the East Side
and Shorewood business improvement districts, the Whitefish Bay native
says his job is a constant pull between constituents — business
owners and municipalities. "It’s not politics like Democrats
and Republicans," says Plaisted, 43. "It’s the politics of
relationships, the businesses and the community. It’s trying to
manage those delicate relationships."
Plaisted has walked that tightrope
before. The UW-Milwaukee political science graduate worked for
Milwaukee Alderman Mike D’Amato before joining the East Side BID six
years ago. "I knew this neighborhood, and the only way for it to
go was up," he says, noting that the Milwaukee BID has come a
long way since then and will hold its fifth annual Summer Soulstice
Music Festival on North Avenue from noon to midnight June 24. In
February, he decided to "branch out a bit" and agreed to
lead the Shorewood BID as well.
But long before college and any
professional experience, Plaisted was primed for politics. "I’m
the youngest of six kids growing up in the ’60s and ’70s," he
says, "and my sisters and brother were always talking, debating,
Watergate, Vietnam."
All that talk fueled the fire inside.
"Rather than falling into the fashionable sound bite that ‘all
government is evil,’ I strongly disagree, and know that government
both large and small can be positive agents of change in people’s
lives or a community’s future. BIDs are one of the smallest examples
of that notion."
That’s what pushes Plaisted — the
continual challenge to foster urban renewal, and he counts as major
accomplishments revitalizing UWM’s Kenilworth building into a
public-private development to include student housing, retail and
condos.
"This district is really waiting
to see, and is excited to see, the Whole Foods Store open," he
says of the East Side area. "It’s the biggest thing to happen
in this neighborhood in a long time.
"For me, the passion is
local," he says.
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