When the Green Bay Packers were competing in the Super Bowl in 1996 and 1997, Oconomowoc native Craig Stoehr was watching the games in Europe, where he was working as a sports promoter.

A decade later, Stoehr (pronounced: stair), a former Wall St. corporate lawyer who has lived and worked in cities like New York, London, Paris, Milan and Istanbul, is the chairman of the Milwaukee Mile Holdings LLC, which he operates with assistance from Andrew Randall, the former president of U.S. Bank Wisconsin.

Stoehr's group, which promotes races and will develop land around the storied one-mile oval track on the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds, includes about 30 investors – including the man who played nose tackle for those memorable Packers teams, Gilbert Brown.

With two major events slated to take place this weekend at the Mile -- the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race Friday night and the NASCAR Busch Series race the following evening, Stoehr – who now lives in downtown Milwaukee -- sat down in a conference room at Milwaukee Mile headquarters in West Allis and talked about his past experiences and his current job in an exclusive Milwaukee Talks interview:

Stoehr: There was more to it than that. You advise the chapters on leadership and scholarship programs. You meet with the vice president of student affairs who is in charge of the Greek system, alumni advisory board and this kind of stuff. There was actually some worthwhile stuff, but there also was a lot of partying. But, it was a good thing to take a year off. I got to travel the South, which was my region. I got to go to schools in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and all these places where I probably wouldn't have spent any time. It was interesting. I got to spend six weeks at UCLA, starting a new chapter. It was a good experience.

OMC: What came next?

Stoehr: I did my first year of law school at Marquette and lived at home while I did that. Then, I transferred my second year at Northwestern and graduated from there. I went to New York and worked for a law firm and while I was there I got to work on World Cup '94 and some Major League Soccer stuff, which led me to go to Paris before the 1998 World Cup. I stayed there for 18 months working on a project with Pele, Ronaldo, Roberto Baggio and a bunch of big soccer stars.