Good City Brewing announced the inaugural recipients of its “1% For Our Home” initiative on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 30.

The program, first revealed in September, has the company pledging 1% of all of its revenue to housing initiatives in Milwaukee.

The first winners, splitting $40,000 evenly, are Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity, ACTS Housing, the 30th Street Industrial Corridor Corporation and Good City’s employee housing fund.

“We are grateful for the important work of our nonprofit partners in making Milwaukee a better city. We are also incredibly grateful for our staff, customers, and community who have carried us through difficult times and made it possible for us to continue seeking the good,” said the brewery in a statement.

Habitat for Humanity is currently engaged in a large-scale effort to build 80 new homes in the Harambee neighborhood. On Nov. 23., the Milwaukee Common Council approved selling 41 vacant lots to the organization to further its effort.

The 30th Street Industrial Corridor Corporation is engaged in a project to renovate vacant homes in the Garden Homes neighborhood and lease them out at affordable rates. Backed by the low-income housing tax credit program, the nonprofit corporation (which primarily functions as a business improvement district) is partnering with Impact Seven and the Garden Homes Neighborhood Association on the 30-unit project. Good City previously donated proceeds from its Black is Beautiful beer to the effort.

ACTS Housing serves families looking to buy homes with financial counseling and real estate brokerage support. The nonprofit also provides loans for acquisition and rehabilitation. It reports that families that purchase homes with its support frequently save $100 to $200 per month compared to their prior rent payments.

Good City’s employee housing fund is a new initiative created in partnership with ACTS. The $10,000 in seed money will provide direct support to employees on down payments and closing costs. ACTS will provide homebuyer counseling.

“Good City was born out of an intentional commitment Dan [Katt] and I made to put down roots and seek the good of Milwaukee. As we thought about how we can push forward our mission… as a company, we kept coming back to the importance of rootedness and calling a place home, keys to which are affordable housing and home ownership,” said co-founder David Dupee in a September statement announcing the program. “We’re excited to focus our efforts toward supporting the amazing local nonprofits who are making it easier for everyone to put down roots and call Milwaukee our home.”

Good City opened in 2016 at 2108 N. Farwell Ave. and substantially expanded that facility in 2017. In 2018, the partners announced the acquisition of the Century City 1 warehouse with plans to use the facility as a home for offices, future production space and like-minded tenants. It announced the facility is full in recent months and secured approval to pursue a second building in Century City.

The brewery opened its Deer District brewery and taproom in January 2019, but surrendered the lease on an event venue above the taproom amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Good City opened a taproom at the Mayfair Collection in Wauwatosa earlier this year.

Weekly Recap

The New Hue

Hue Vietnamese Restaurant is on the move, but not traveling far. The restaurant, 2691 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., is moving two doors south to a dramatically redeveloped building.

Hue owners Cat Tran and Mark Nielsen are taking a one-story, 1,288-square-foot building and nearly quadrupling it in size.

A two-story addition will be constructed in front of the structure at 2699 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., which was last home to Sven’s Cafe. The upper floor will contain three studio apartments.

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Make Your Voice Heard on The Future of Downtown

Have strong feelings about the future of downtown Milwaukee? The City of Milwaukee would like to hear from you.

Earlier this year, the Department of City Development and Milwaukee Downtown, Business Improvement District #21 launched a process to update the city’s comprehensive land-use plan for the downtown area and hired a team of contractors.

Now they’re looking for community input.

A website allows individuals to add comments to an interactive map or a virtual idea wall. A virtual community meeting is planned for Dec. 9 at 6:30 p.m. Registration for the meeting is now open.

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Sas-Pérez Stepping Down, VIA CDC Hiring New Executive Director

VIA CDC, an anchor institution on Milwaukee’s South Side, is looking for a new executive director.

Brianna Sas-Pérez announced Tuesday that she would be stepping down from her role atop the community development corporation.

“I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to work alongside such visionary and committed neighbors, entrepreneurs, coworkers and others. VIA would not be where it is today if it weren’t for our partners and our community who believe in, and work for, a world where every place equips every person to reach their full potential,” said Sas-Pérez in a statement.

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Landlord Helps Tenant Get Rental Assistance, Instead of Evicting

Michelle didn’t want to evict her struggling tenant in the middle of a pandemic.

The tenant in her West Allis property told her they’d applied for rental assistance through Community Advocates and provided proof of the application.

So Michelle, who did not want her last name to be used for fear of embarrassing her tenant, waited.

And waited.

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Eppstein Uhen Merging With Green Bay Area Firm

One of Milwaukee’s largest architecture firms is expanding.

Eppstein Uhen Architects will merge with Performa, an architecture and engineering firm based in De Pere, WI. and Atlanta.

The combined firm will have more than 250 employees with offices in Milwaukee, De Pere, Madison, Denver and Atlanta. Performa reports currently having a 50-person team.

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Indoor Concert Complex Planned Next To Summerfest

Summerfest could soon have a year-round musical neighbor.

FPC Live, a Madison-based concert promotion and venue operations company, plans to open an indoor concert complex in the Historic Third Ward.

Plans call for 800 and 4,000 seat theaters with scalable capacities in a connected complex.

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Public Museum Needs $45 Million From County

Milwaukee Public Museum, Inc. (MPM) is asking Milwaukee County for $45 million in taxpayer funding for its planned new facility.

MPM is a non-profit the county has contracted with to operate the museum at 800 W. Wells St. – a building wholly owned by the county – and manage the collections, also owned by the county. In early 2021, three properties at the northeast corner of W. McKinley Ave. and N. 6th St. were acquired for the new museum by a limited liability company affiliated with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC).

The current plans are for a 230,000-square-foot facility. The price tag for the project, including development and the transition of MPM to the new facility, is approximately $240 million; and all signs point to the future rebranding of the museum as the Wisconsin Museum of Nature and Culture (WMNC). The Betty Brinn Children’s Museum would be a tenant in the building, under current plans, occupying approximately 30,000 square feet.

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Jesse Jackson Blasts City’s “Taxing and Taking”

A group of Milwaukee pastors feels that the city is targeting them by “taxing and taking” their churches.

“A church should not be taxed. It’s a sin,” said pastor Jesse Jackson, in town to support the Milwaukee-based coalition. “We are going to file a lawsuit. We are going to demand the money back. We are going to lead demonstrations across the country.”

Regardless of your belief in heaven and hell, the State of Wisconsin does maintain an explicit tax exemption for religious properties. But it also requires property owners to file tax exemption form PC-220 on even calendar years to maintain that exemption. The City Assessor’s Office mails the form to applicable property owners.

The City of Milwaukee has levied property taxes against entities that fail to complete the form.

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Anti-Displacement Policy Sees Slow Start

The City of Milwaukee adopted an anti-displacement policy in 2019 for new development in targeted neighborhoods, but the first buildings subject to the policy only opened this fall.

Forty rental units across three developments are subject to the policy, but only two of those developments have been completed: THIRTEEN31 Place and 37th Street School. Ribbon cutting ceremonies were held for both developments in October. A third project, ThriveOn King, has seen its groundbreaking delayed for more than a year.

The policy requires that 20% of any affordable units in any development that received city financial assistance be set aside for at least 30 days for priority leasing by neighborhood residents.

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New Housing Permits Up 26% In State

The number of permits for new home construction has been sharply rising in Wisconsin, which could help address rising home prices.

A Wisconsin Policy Forum study of U.S. Census data found permits for new housing units from January to September 2021 were up 26 percent from the previous year.

While that isn’t near the peaks in permits the state saw during the 1990s and most of the 2000s, lead author Mark Sommerhauser said it’s still the strongest level of permit activity in more than a decade.

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