Huge Project Proposed for Bay View
Six-floor, $25 million project with 144 apartments and 15,000 square feet of retail.
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Six-floor, $25 million project with 144 apartments and 15,000 square feet of retail. Back to the full article.
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Categories: Real Estate
I grew up and went to school in Bay View. 26 years. I am now unable to afford to live in Bay View. Back in 2005, section 8 residents were given the boot on Howell and LIncoln and police harassed everyone walking down the street who looked poor. One used to be able to get a 3 course meal for $5-6 bucks or a cheap beer (not $4-5 dollar micros) at a real neighborhood tavern in BV where they don’t kick you out for wearing a legalize it hat. I’ll never find an affordable spot to live by the lake in this town again. Thank you gentrification, urban planners, and yuppies! You can have MY HOMETOWN of BV.
I hear there’s lots of parking in Waukesha.
It is going to create a canyon effect with the other buildings already built and being planned. This canyon effect can be found already further down KK. It will block too much sunlight and concentrate dirt and noise. This is just such a bad idea, bad planning. Businesses will be driven out by ever higher rents when the increase in business isnt realized as has already happened.
@Ingrid I’m pretty sure this building’s height is in line with urban planning ideals for a street the width of KK. And what businesses will be driven out? I would think new customers (and I’d note new friends) would be good for local business.
Dylan, inflation happens. I’m afraid meal prices go up. As for the gentrification concerns, benefits and losses can be endlessly debated. Can’t deny it’s inexorable occurance, though.
I live in 326 E archer ave This rediculous “development” is gona take away peoples homes Mine and the rest of the block I live on All for what so they can pretty up the neighborhood for all the rich folks and then charge outragous rents that no one can afford to the peolpe who have lived here for years Im very angry and outraged I believe I have every right to be I can barely afford my current rent as it keeps going and I will definitely not be able to afford to live in my BayView neighborhood anymore due to this “Development Project” Where are the people who live here suppose to go when they decide to bulldoze down our homes Where are we going live when you take away our homes that some of us have had for 20plus years 🙁 I have so much frustration inside i cant even put it into words
Dudemeister:
Do some research about mixed income housing development as opposed to concentrating pockets of wealth or poverty—-see notorious Chicago projects. I am a factory laborer who can’t even afford to live in a community built by factory hands that I grew up in. As far as the chef inspired plates now served up in BV, enjoy them if you have the pocket coin. I remember the days of Johnny’s, BV Family Restaurant, and George Webb’s at 2 a.m and prefer the blue collar fare. Urban renewal that doesn’t involve the construction of affordable housing has no benefits for the working class and spreads the seeds of poverty to other parts of the city. FYI-Washington Park neighborhood is benefiting from Habit for Humanity organization building affordable homes in that neighborhood. Washington Park is now approaching the 90% home ownership level which is more beneficial to a neighborhood than some upscale boutique shops and restaurants now home to Bay View.
@Ingrid Buxton No it will not create a canyon effect. It’s located across the street from single family homes and it’s across the alley from a park on the other side. If businesses were so worried about their rents going up, it would be surprising to see so many of them showing up to the meeting to speak up in support of the project. They can afford higher rents when they have more nearby customers to patronize their businesses.
Disappointing. Too bad Bay View sold out. Could have been like Shorewood with more brick and historical type architecture. That is a more human scale and walkable neighborhood than what this is going to be.
I think the design is hideous.. why can’t the design be more organic, more neighborhood feel to it. way too big city look. bay view is a small neighborhood and I feel this design does not reflect this.
Remember when everybody complained that these new apartment buildings didn’t fit in with the aesthetic of Bay View? Guess what? They do now.
As sympathetic as I am to longtime Bay View resident’s memories and situations, things change. Thankfully, the change isn’t a decline in home prices and quality of life. It’s a great neighborhood and the development interest is a reflection of that.
Some have and will be priced out of the neighborhood’s most desirable areas, but there’s still plenty of space for people of all economic stripes to live in this part of town and the city as a whole.
Hopefully the new residents of this building will appreciate the cheap drinks and charms across the street at Bay Street Pub.
First of all, this headline is purposely incendiary- “HUGE!!” Project Proposed for Bay View. 6 stories and 144 units is not “huge” and the building is certainly not out of context in square footage when you look to the immediate north and west. Nor is it “huge” compared to other new apartment projects in the city, including the misinformed comment about how Bay View should be more like Shorewood. Obviously that writer hasn’t taken a walk down Oakland Avenue in Shorewood lately. I’m so sick of the anti-development crowd just hauling out the same typical complaints (traffic, gentrification, parking, “i want it to be like it used to be”) every time a new project is proposed without looking at the context of the site. this is not a quaint little Bay View block with modest worker homes all in a line. This is a busy intersection with 100 foot wide roads on either side. It’s a site that wants to be two things, a sizable mixed used building that holds the corner with some mass and gravitas or a fast food restaurant. I think we can all agree that we don’t want the latter. From a planning perspective what this intersection needs is to be closed down visually so it does not promote high speeds and a lack of awareness of what kind of neighborhood you’re entering. In a perfect world you would elimnate the right turn lane, narrow the streets and build buldings on all the corners that are 4 to 6 stories high- think North and Farwell or North and Prospect. Absent that, you want to create as much pedestrian traffic and commerce at the site as possible, with buildings that are taller to help create a sense of intimacy. This is a fine building and a transformational project for the north end of Bay View. Hopefully the future has rowhouses lining Bay street to the east to add to the sense of occupancy and ownership to what is now a no man’s land.
Rather than bitch and moan about how things used to be lets work with this developer and try to make the future as good as it can be. and as for the question about where people go when rents increase, they move further west and south and begin to transform those neighborhoods into attractive places to live and do business. that is the natural cycle of the city and its why city’s are living organisms that evolve and remain interesting.
Where are the people? Where will the people come from to fill in these new apartments? Milwaukee is losing residents. And it’s not just the City. The County is losing residents, also. I suspect Milwaukee is spending a lot of wasteful money on new buildings that are only “shifting” people around. None of these “huge projects” are luring new residents to the City, or the County. I am afraid Milwaukee is now similar to cities like Memphis and Toledo. When I was growing up, Milwaukee was compared to Denver, Atlanta, and even Dallas.
Leah, You nailed it! Thanks.
@MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian
Census estimates said MKE lost population last year. It’s one year and it will be an anomaly. At all the new developments going in at least half the new residents come from outside MKE. So to answer your question of where will the people come from, the answer is likely from outside MKE. Does that help?
And its not like the city is subsidizing this stuff. This project will be privately financed, I’m sure like the rest of the apartment projects going up in the area. So unless all these developers and investors are really dumb people like losing money, I would guess they have done their research and decided there is a market for them.
No offense to Toledo, but no one is comparing Milwaukee and Toledo. It must be hard to get information about Milwaukee in Nashville.
To Kristi’s point. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting…but is this incorporating Archer Ave? One of the other posters mentioned this building will sit across the alley from the park (Zilman Park) which would indicate a row of houses is being removed. So what is the status of Archer?
Question: Will the Apartments be for rent or be condos for sale?
People who rent are here today, gone tomorrow. Mindsets can be that there is less desire to become rooted in the community and to be half hazzard about caring for the community. (garbage pollution, respect for residents and shop owners, following the rules and laws, etc). It’s like how some people treat rental cars.
Baby Boomers are retiring in droves and tend to move to southern states. Millennials don’t have enough money to pay rents and tend to live with parents or cheap housing. I’d like to see the demographic and affordability studies. Perhaps, currently, BV is an area of economic growth and development.
@Wendy They are apartments, no one in Milwaukee is building condos.
PS I’m a renter
MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian Milwaukee isn’t wasting money on these projects. Even though many of the new apartment buildings in the city get some money from TIF spending that money will be paid back via property taxes that the developers have to pay regardless of whether or not they’re making money off these properties. Beyond that most of the new apartments in the city are being built on land that wasn’t generating any tax revenue before they were built. New Land Enterprises would obviously do some market research before dropping $25 million on a building and they wouldn’t spend the money if they believed nobody was going to move in.
Besides it would be a good thing for the city if they overbuilt anyway. It’s basic economics, if supply increases faster than demand prices go down. The anti-development people have it exactly wrong on this. If we block new apartments from going up we’re going to end up like San Francisco.
All people can not walk long or short distances! Every time a new developer is adding a large complexes which deletes parking spaces, they respond, ” More foot traffic is needed”. What I would propose is more handicap parking spaces to compensate the disable community.
One of Milwaukee Handicap Drivers
I understand the TIF process. My point was (and still is) shouldn’t more efforts be spent on using similar processes to bring jobs (and subsequently more residents) to the City first, instead of new developments at all? And no, it isn’t difficult to get information about Milwaukee in Nashville – I live in both cities. Actually it is quite easy. Nashville is gaining at least 80 residents a day (have you read the news lately?). Milwaukee has steadily lost population since the 1980’s – and most of it is likely because of local politicians and it’s residents maintaining that ugly racist attitude. Who wants to move their businesses and employees to that type of social/economic climate? Even if the new developments bring in some new residents, it isn’t enough because the region is still not gaining residents.
@MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian The city uses TIF and a variety of tools to do just this… Note the Menomonee Valley, Century City, Northwestern Mutual etc etc..
You are making some sweeping generalizations (which I imagine a Nashville resident wouldn’t appreciate about their city) that are misguided considering you claim to live here.
@MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian
Milwaukee has lost population over the last 40 or 50 years, much like the rest of comparably sized Midwestern cities. We fortunately, haven’t lost as much as many others and our population has stabilized over the last decade and a half at around 600,000. Some of that loss is likely attributable to racism. But don’t make it seem like Nashville is some bastion of racial harmony, because it isn’t.
You like Nashville, that’s great. I hear it’s nice and I hope to visit soon. Comparing Milwaukee and Nashville is like comparing apples to oranges. They are demographically, economically, and historically different.
so, to take @MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian thought to its natural conclusion, a city that is not gaining population or is stable in it’s population should never build a single new unit of housing. Such a city should remain stagnant, not evolve and hope that somehow the trend will turn? Of course that’s ridiculous. However, the point being made by @MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian is not unusual, especially by those who are anti-development. It’s the old, “don’t build it there, build it here” argument. or the “don’t build that, build this” refrain, as if every single new development comes from a grand plan that the city can dictate to everyone who wants to invest in our city. Most development is from market rate developers who are simply asking for zoning permission. Their is a limited role that can be played in that scenario and in too many cases neighbors and elected officials treat these investors as the enemy, not as partners that can be worked with. The city has limited resources it can devote to influencing the location and types of development they would like to promote. That is a very small portion of the total development pie. Can they use those resources better? my opinion is absolutely yes. Rather than play coy and be reactive to developers with city resources the city should more often lead with them too promote affordable housing or catalytic projects. A case in point is the site at 4th and Wisconsin. This is a key parcel for the west side of downtown. Rather than issuing an RFP that asks for market driven projects, the RFP should indicate up front that city resources are available for the right project. In that way you receive far more grand and transformational projects and better ideas from a wider array of national developers. Critics would argue that you are then tipping the scale of market driven development. But that is a false premise that DCD loves to float. There is not a single major project downtown that has not been subsidized for years- NML- $70 million, Arena – $250 million, Pabst- $40 million, Moderne – $20 million plus HUD loan, Couture $25 million, Manpower- $20 million. There are 31 different TIF’s in downtown Milwaukee. Plus the hotels use the Federal EB-5 programs and most housing projects receive either WHEDA loans or Low Income Housing tax credits. I think the 833 E. Michigan building may have been a true market rate project, but other than that I challenge anyone to name the last one. This city would be much better served if we led with the limited resources we had to truly influence the type and location of development rather than being reactive to the whim of developers.
https://www.wpr.org/wisconsins-slow-population-growth-continued-2016-census-data-shows
Note that Milwaukee has seen the most decline of population in WI even despite those TIF efforts described above – “one of the 10 American counties that saw the largest declines”. Numbers do not lie. So, my point is not to seem that I am anti-development, my point is where are the discussions taking place to reverse those numbers? And in lieu of those numbers, it bears repeating: What is Milwaukee and WI doing to bring jobs and people to the region? Because whatever has taken place so far, has not worked – again, the numbers do not lie. Instead of getting all fuzzy and warm because the City is building new places to live that will simply shift people around, why not talk about holding the local government accountable in reversing those numbers?
@MilwaukeeanTurnedNashvillian Why not do both? Advocate for development that increases the tax base and makes the city more attractive while also holding the city accountable for attracting new jobs. Of course, these goals aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s very little the government can do about the decades long decline in manufacturing and the jobs the industry brought to the city, but they CAN try to bring more residents into the city. These new residents will bring money to be spent on local businesses and tax dollars for say, schools or public safety.
@Bill, I completely agree with you! But the data shows it isn’t quite working out that way. Unfortunately, we aren’t adding to the tax base when there are more people leaving Milwaukee than coming to Milwaukee. Instead of trying to bring back jobs that just simply won’t ever return to the City, I bet Milwaukee could emerge one day as a reinvented metropolis with a thriving economy only if the residents wish to reinvent themselves in the process and say goodbye to the jobs that simply will not return. Why live in a VHS world when your peers are in a digital world? 🙂
Why don’t these racist developers developed north side. They want toake this exclusive rich area and economic segregation. New architecture is always ugly and rich people stup is to pay those prices to live on top one another. Condos so ugly go build and developers in wauwatosa . Any new milwaukee development makes mil look more like suburbs and talk of new business development means same boring national chains like subway or potbelly
Milwaukee metro area has added roughly 16k people since the last census was done. While that doesn’t make it a hotbed, it also shows this is a one year blip (and only an estimate). Not to mention, the city can be adding people in attractive areas (downtown, bayview, far west side) while losing population elsewhere.
And Andy, developers are looking to make money, and as much as possible. They build where the demand is and where the rents are high enough so they won’t lose money without subsidies. It’s economics, not racism.
AG, you are correct. But, what you are also not saying is that Milwaukee County lost 4,866 – and that is below the 2011 level. The drop was the sixth largest of any county and the largest percentage drop among the 100 largest counties in the country. So, while the “Metro” area may be gaining some new folks, Milwaukee, and Milwaukee County are not. It seems the fancy suburbanites just do not want to live in the City – or even close to it. Also, it is worth noting that Dade County gained 43,200 or 8.85 percent, and Brown County, up 12,394 or 5 percent.
Again, what will the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County do to reverse those numbers? “Metro” area population increases do not equate to regional growth when the County and City are losing population.
Parts of the city are decreasing in population, as has been the case for decades and decades. Parts of the city appear to be increasing in population. Parts of the metro area are decreasing in population and parts of the metro area are increasing in population.
I’d much rather that at least some of the housing construction in the metro area be taking place in the city rather than the suburbs, even if the city as a whole has a flat or slowly decreasing population.
With all this new development going on for the past 10 years to enrich my Bay View, downtown Bay View still looks like a run down filthy uncared for mess. Why do you think an orange and blue building will help?
Yeah, and Nashville’s population explosion has turned a once charming Southern city into a traffic nightmare filled with rude people. I think more Tennesseans should find their way up to MKE.
Does anybody else wonder if Tony Z is getting kick backs from these developers? Maybe there ought to be some investigative reporting on that. Graham?
1) Definitely put a development there
2) the design is terrible joke. The community (especially the View) should demand a higher level aesthetic and progressive design for such a prominent corner. The entrance to this part of town should feature something truly unique. Replicating the Mega City One like condo block wall of water street and so many other cities isn’t acceptable. That developer will come and go but we all have to live with it and see it for decades. Garner some inspiration from our classic German architecture for a sort of gothic/industrial design. If more modern then go wildly futuristic. Steal my glance! Get featured in architectual magazines! At the vary least be cutting edge. Take a queue crom some new developments in Melbourne AUS or other cities some people only dream to visit. This proposed design is irresponsiblely DULL!
NICE!