The Residences on Water Are Rising Fast

The Residences on Water
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

The Residences on Water are rising fast, leading me to believe that the building actually will make its spring 2008 opening date.

I walked by the building tonight on the way home from dollar burger night (every Tuesday) at Bar Louie. I was impressed at how quickly the building is rising.

A couple quick facts…

• The building has 31 condos ranging from $234,000 to $2,300,000, of which 8 have been sold.
• The condos will occupy the top four floors.
• The Staybridge Suites hotel will occupy the middle six floors and include 128 rooms
• There will be a rooftop garden for residents and hotel guests.
• There will be 14,000 square feet of retail space
• The building is being built using the new ER Post Structural System that enables alternate floors to remain column free and allows for rapid build times from the use of precast trusses, the fact that it can be assembled in all weather conditions, and the requirement for fewer pieces.
• If you buy the penthouse of penthouses in the development for $2,362,100 you get a private 2,400 square foot root-top green space. Apparently there are two roof-top green spaces, presumably divided by some kind of massive HVAC unit.

Developer Development Opportunity Corp of Fort Myers, Florida purchased six parcels of land for the development. Five of the parcels and a city-owned alley were purchased from the Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority for $443,340. The other parcel was a 13,000-square-foot parking lot purchased from the 1101 North Market Street Partners for $1.2 million. The 1101 North Market Street Partners also had previously sold the former Blatz Wash House located adjacent to the new development at 1101 North Market Street to SSG Properties Inc. of Pewaukee for $4.2 million in 2003. SSG Properties is too say the least, excited. The Blatz Wash House might finally get the attention it deserves with the increased foot traffic in the area.

No word yet on who might be occupying the retail space. I don’t think it will take long to find a tenant for the site because there isn’t much else in the way of retail space in that area on Water St. coupled with thousands of drunk people at bars every weekend, MSOE dorms just around the corner, and a growing number of condos being developed in the area.

The most important aspect of the development is that it replaces a surface parking lot with a large building that increases neighborhood density, which makes everything around the new building better and continues to expand upon a growing downtown area. The visual perception of downtown used to end at the 1000 North Water Street building, but will now continue north one more block to The Residences on Water.

Dave Reid of the Milwaukee Development Update has a Flickr photo set up already and a blog post.