More High-Rise Outlooks: A tiny parcel of land Dowtown along the Milwaukee River has yet another developer seeing high-rise profits. The city-owned land at 1027 N. Edison St., along the Highland Street Pedestrian bridge, was first eyed for a glass-lined 30-plus-story condo project before the Downtown condo boom began.

That was way back when John Norquist was mayor and the project was his effort to jump-start the empty-nester invasion of the central business district -- visionary at the time. The million-dollar dwellings never materialized due to financing and some neighborhood opposition.

Anything built on the narrow parcel would overwhelm the row-house homes directly to the north, a likely point of contention for neighbors who could see their property values plummet. Planning for only one level of parking may also raise a few questions from the already parking challenged neighborhood.

The new plan is for a $10.6 million eight-story building with a restaurant and banquet hall on the first two floors, offices on the third floor and condos on the rest. Russell Davis, who owns Café Vecchio Mondo, which would virtually be in sight of the new building, will own this one as well. The city will consider selling him the property for $540,000 at a meeting next week. Davis would have to jump into construction within three months of the sale, pushing him into the development fray of the Park East Freeway Corridor much faster than projects that sit idle just blocks away. He'd have 18 months to finish the building.

Banking on Prime: It pays to have an "in," and in the case of Prime Financial Credit Union that "in" is in the bank accounts of city workers. Prime Financial won the bidding rights to set up shop in the Zeidler Municipal Building, which will house an office and an ATM. Prime Financial is used by about 35 percent of city employees. It will pay the city $477,959.92 over the next 10 years for the rights to lobby space. The city would get no money from ATM transactions in the Zeidler Building, unlike the situation with most ATM setups.

Election Engineering: It's a strange way to look at audit results, but there always seems to be a lot of weirdness under the dome in Madison. A Legislative Audit Bureau investigation found that the state's effort to computerize voter registration efforts is woefully inadequate despite the fact that a private contractor, Accenture, has been given more than two years to get it together.

One way the LAB suggests that voters could be more easily registered is that municipal clerks keep records of voters' birth dates.

That had state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) jumping up and down over one of her pet proposals.

"What better way to obtain the birth dates of all voters than a driver's license or state-issued photo ID?" asked Lazich. Gov. Doyle has vetoed a voter photo ID three times, citing the fact that it would limit peoples' right to vote.

But after hearing Milwaukee Election Commission Director Sue Edman, there are a lot more important issues topping the voting agenda than IDs. Edman told a city committee this week that the database set up by Accenture is too slow, complex, and time consuming to be used accurately by the February primary.

She essentially said the city was going to look to the state Elections Board (soon to be known as the Government Accountability Board) -- which chose Accenture in a questionable bidding process -- to bail it out.