East Side Apartments Nearly Complete

Another apartment building will soon be completed on Milwaukee’s East Side. A “Now Leasing” sign adorns the construction site of 1809 N. Cambridge Ave., a five-story, 36-unit building just north of E. Brady St. The project is being developed by Chicago developer Yiannis Konstantinou.

The development was built “as of right,” meaning it conforms to all existing zoning rules. This allowed the developer to skip a lengthy approval process. Instead of meetings and hearings with the City Plan Commission, neighbors, Common Council, and Department of City Development, the developer simply pulled building permits and went to work.

Konstantinou acquired the lot from CIBM Bank in early 2013 for $150,000. He bought it less than a year after a fire severely damaged a vacant home that occupied the parcel. Prior to the fire, the home was sold in June 2012 for $280,000. As recently as 2011, the home and lot were assessed for a combined $410,900. Last year, the land was assessed at $46,500. The assessor’s office didn’t miss the changes to the property, bumping up the land assessment to $252,000 and setting the value of the improvements at $1,702,000 this year.

That assessment increase will raise the annual property tax bill from $1,393.74 in 2014 to approximately $62,400. The new building will yield local governments a combined $61,000 more than the empty lot it replaced. That’s a nice chunk of change, roughly equivalent to the salary of a police officer.

Photo Gallery by Brendan Murphy

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