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Lowe's decision to leave Midtown Center was a body slam to the City of Milwaukee. If you’ve ever watched pro wrestling, body slams happen all the time, and sometimes the slamee wins. But for the moment, its not good news.

The day after the announcement, I got a call from the MJS reporter working on the story. Her first question: was it the neighborhood or the economy that necessitated the decision. I get a little defensive about these things and responded “neither”. Why can’t the company’s statement just stand on its own? Poor sales from the get-go, was the reason the Lowe's spokesperson cited. When the store opened in 2005, we weren’t in recession, so it wasn’t the economy if store sales were poor then. Lowe's, presumably knew about the area, and they made the decision to put their first Wisconsin store in the heart of Milwaukee. Aren’t they smart people, the reporter asked?

So was it the neighborhood? It was an embarrassment that Midtown was the first store closed in the history of the company. It had to happen in our neighborhood! But the JSOnline version of the story contained comments following that were deeply disturbing. The first one “Guess there was no home improvement in the ‘hood” was the least offensive of an onslaught that followed. It was as if nothing in Milwaukee had ever changed. Restaurants couldn’t stay open because of the tipping habits of area residents, to fear of driving to Midtown, was the gist of it.

You would think I would be used to it by now. A real estate broker once told me Starbucks would never come to our neighborhood because African Americans don’t drink coffee. I’ve heard this nonsense for years. The reporting about Lowe's at Midtown was straight forward, and I had no problem with it. Then it was the Sunday feature story of AO Smith’s last employee, the guard at the Tower Auto site. The deterioration of the art deco office tower building was all about the neighborhood, according to the “last employee”. Last week there was Marc Levine’s column about his belief that the proposed water hub in Milwaukee is a hoax. He’s made a living being a Gloomy Gus. Then the poverty story, that Milwaukee is the 11^th poorest city in the US, was tempered a little by the fact that poverty actually dropped in 2008. The cumulative effect can be overwhelming sometimes.

Back to Lowe's. I don’t actually think it had anything to do with the neighborhood. When the announcement was made that they would build their first store at Midtown, I’ll admit, it was a bit of a head scratcher. Menards or Home Depot, maybe. But Lowes is higher end but the area needed a full service, big box hardware store. One friend of mine said there was no one in the store whenever he went in. Another said it was always busy and the service was good. So who knows?

Do we blame Downtown Milwaukee when a store leaves Grand Ave. Mall? Of course not. So why do we blame the neighborhood when Lowes leaves Midtown? I think, at the end of the day, Lowe's decided to pull the plug, and that was that. I am not going to soul search or beat myself up about it. Midtown and the community just needs to move on.