Milwaukee Real Estate Draws National Interest

Big news has been made as a number of properties in metro Milwaukee, particularly in the city, are snapped up by out-of-state investors.

Schlitz Park was a headline sale, going for more than $100 million to a partnership of investors based in Texas and Michigan.

And this week it was reported that a Portland-based real estate firm, Felton Properties, bought more than $37 million worth of office buildings in the area. The firm acquired buildings in the Crossroads Business Park in Waukesha and Park Place complex in Milwaukee, Sean Ryan reported in the Milwaukee Business Journal. All told the firm now owns 392,000 square feet of leasable space in the local market.

Also announced this week, Illinois-based Arnel Inc. purchased two apartment buildings in Milwaukee, the Golden Domes Apartments at 1620 S. 6th St. and the Kunzelmann-Esser Lofts at 710 W. Historic Mitchell St., as Alex Zank reported for BizTimes. The combined assessed value of the buildings is more than $7 million. The firm now owns 173 units of housing in the city between the two buildings.

Denver-based Baceline Investments purchased the Sequoia Center at 6801-6917 W. Brown Deer Rd., Zank reported. The Sequoia Center is a strip mall with 35,400 square feet divided between 15 different retail spaces. It sold for $3.4 million.

Developers from other states have even come here to build. The Quin, for example, is a 70-unit apartment building at 324 S. 2nd Street that was developed by out-of-state firm Linden Street Partners.

Felton Properties head Matthew Felton cut right to the chase in an interview: “We look at Milwaukee and see it as being in the beginning stages of a significant amount of growth.”

Redevelopment of Caterpillar Buildings Starts

New York-based Reich Brothers has started redeveloping the massive industrial site in South Milwaukee formerly used by Caterpillar Inc.

The site features 28 acres south of E. Rawson Ave., Tom Daykin reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It has eight buildings on it, and features 550,000 square feet of industrial space and 250,000 square feet of office space. The site is part of a tax-incremental financing district and also sits within a federally-designed Opportunity Zone.

Reich Brothers purchased the property in August for $13.3 million. The firm plans to lease the space to multiple industrial tenants once they’ve finished redeveloping.

In Other News:

• Milwaukee Ballet’s New Home
• Engineering Firm HNTB Moving Downtown
• Genke Buys Alchemist Theatre Building
• Western Hemisphere’s Tallest Timber Tower Okayed
• Rexnord’s New Buildings Sell for $14.4 Million

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