After Revisions Office Building Approved for 27th and Wisconsin
Wisconsin Ave. & 27th St. Rendering
WIS27 LLC’s proposal to develop a 64,000 SF office building at the corner of 27th Street and Wisconsin Avenue was approved by the Milwaukee Common Council today. WIS27 will purchase the vacant lot from the city for $1, and intends to lease the new building to the State of Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
At that meeting Ald. Bauman was successful in holding the project to allow for more time for the city to work with WIS27 to incorporate changes that would better facilitate the building’s interaction with the street. At meeting held just before today’s Common Council meeting, new designs by Korb Tredo Architects were approved despite earlier insistence by the development team and Marcoux that no new changes were possible. Although, the building still lacks access on 27th Street, the Wisconsin Avenue entrance was enhanced for future use, and a 26th Street door was made operable. With these improvements in place the proposal was approved.
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- Wisconsin Avenue Rendering
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- Wisconsin * 27th Rendering
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- Site Plan
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- 26th Street Rendering
I’m pretty disappointed to see this project go through like this. We’re wasting one of the most prominent blocks in the city on a cheap, suburban style project that, as Bauman so eloquently puts it “…basically violates every urban design principal that this city has been advocating for the last 20 years.”
What happened to the plans to put a supermarket and mixed use development on the site? If the city can afford to offer this much of a subsidy to utter crap, then they should be able to put up the subsidy to support something that the neighborhood actually needs (one of the densest populated neighborhoods in the city with low car ownership and no full supermarket). I’d even rather see the Housing Authority build something there than this…
Well…. given the current political climate I’m tempted to say, hey, this is better than nothing. Which it is.
Yeah, many better projects could have happened, but this is most definitely an improvement and it’s not anything I’d call horrible.