Mental Health Complex: Another Miller Design

There's a lot of noise about the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex.

Bruce Murphy makes a connection.

The collapse of a concrete panel at the O’Donnell Park parking structure and its resulting fatality has gotten considerable coverage from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but the newspaper has missed most of the backstory. The irony is that William O’Donnell himself – the former county executive the structure is named after – is as much to blame as anyone for the faulty construction.

The newspaper has reported, accurately, that the building’s architect, Jordan Miller, was not on the original list of architects for the job. But they have wrongly – and repeatedly – blamed this on Dave Schulz. Yes, Schulz added Miller to the list of candidates for the job, and he was ultimately selected. But Schulz was then the county’s parks director working under the orders of O’Donnell, who had a relationship with Miller that went back decades.

So?

The [Miller, Maier] firm won one of the biggest federal projects in 1960s Milwaukee, building the $24.5 million Downtown post office. His firm built the Mitchell International Airport terminal, the UW-Milwaukee Golda Meir Library addition, the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, the Milwaukee Area Technical College Student Center and many other buildings.

How many of the 'problems' at MCMHC are design-flaws?