Brian Vandewalle (1948 – 2026) was a leading strategic urban planner, economic development adviser, and development consultant to the Upper Midwest for over forty years.
He was a master in the areas of urban planning, urban redevelopment, and urban design … well known and trusted by Midwest communities, corporations, institutions, and developers.
Educated at Ball State University in the College of Architecture & Planning, Brian in his early professional career amassed a wide range of planning experience working in the public sector before establishing and hand-picking and mentoring over the course of 50 years the multidisciplinary team of planners, designers, economic development, and communicators at Vandewalle & Associates.
In the five decades that followed, Vandewalle & Associates (Madison, Milwaukee) grew into a well-respected urban planning, economic redevelopment, and design consulting firm producing some of the most impactful land-use plans in the country.
Brian was the Master Planner responsible for American Family’s Madison headquarters campus, and for the Caterpillar Headquarters in East Peoria. He served as master planner to the Quad Cities, for John Deere in its HW city of Waterloo Iowa for over 25 years, and for the Milwaukee County Grounds Research Park/Milwaukee Regional Medical Center.
While carefully building V&A’s guild-like, multi-disciplinary team, Brian led the firm’s development of a comprehensive approach to economic repositioning, integrating planning, design, and market analysis while skillfully leveraging the area’s land, cultural, and human assets. With his finger on the pulse of the region’s emerging technologies and economic sectors, Brian synthesized market dynamics with deep knowledge of communities and a broad experience working with urban centers to craft new, place-based economies that are future-ready.
He pursued a purpose of creatively rebuilding and retooling post-industrial central cities and economies, helping them emerge stronger through the tides of change. He was an expert at using redevelopment tools to build tax base, eliminate blight, and create new urban housing and employment opportunities.
The developments that result are long-range efforts that are standing the test of time as sustainable examples of his insightful and forward-thinking market-driven design.
Beyond planning, Brian’s expertise brought projects to fruition by generating consensus, forging partnerships, making key government and business linkages, determining financing sources, and recruiting end-users for urban development and redevelopment. Brian was also a licensed real estate broker in the State of Wisconsin, and professionally practiced commercial and industrial brokerage. His hands-on experience with project tenants and buyers combined thoughtful planning vision with a very realistic perspective on project feasibility.
In his 50 years leading the company, he touched on and advised virtually every project that moved through the Madison and Milwaukee offices of Vandewalle & Associates.
Brian was awarded the “Best of Madison Business” in 2005 for his visionary work on the Madison, Wisconsin Mayor’s “Healthy City” economic development initiative.
In his life outside of the company, Brian was also a serial entrepreneur. He delighted in harnessing local assets and turning them into a series of small entrepreneurial side businesses: a hotel, coffee house, restaurant and culinary school, and spirits and distillery company among others. Washington Island in Door County was both his weekend test lab and place of recharge.
Brian’s unique brand of multi-level thinking, opportunity synthesis, and action planning to bring impactful projects to fruition continues on today through the able team he built and mentored at Vandewalle.