MILWAUKEE — For Nicole Sponseller, a getaway to Milwaukee has typically meant trips to the zoo, museums or maybe a Milwaukee Brewers game at Miller Park.
The 85-mile trip from Madison’s West Side has never ended at 40th Street and Hampton Avenue in one of the city’s most challenged neighborhoods.
Nicole, 15, a soon-to-be junior at West High School, is part of a youth group from Asbury United Methodist Church on Madison’s Far West Side that spent a recent week scraping, painting, climbing ladders and immersing themselves in a part of Wisconsin that many try to avoid.