Momentum continues to grow at The Avenue.

The redeveloped Grand Avenue Mall scored another new tenant this week. Marking Services Inc. leased 5,339 square feet of office space, filling the last remaining space in what used to be the food court at The Shops of Grand Avenue mall.

In addition, the 3rd Street Market Hall is open and an attached apartment building is being renovated and will soon reopen.

That’s a remarkable change from February 2011 when then-mayor Tom Barrett announced a West Wisconsin Avenue Workgroup focused on dealing with what virtually everyone agreed was an underperforming stretch of Milwaukee’s main street.

Marking Services, the latest new tenant, provides labeling services and identification products. It will join development anchor tenant GRAEF on the third floor of the mixed-use complex. Marking Services maintains a plant on the city’s northwest side at 8265 N. Faulkner Rd.

Developer Josh Krsnak told Tom Daykin that there is only 13,000 square feet of office space remaining in the former mall. Two organizations, an architecture firm and a nonprofit group, are reportedly considering leases.

Founders 3 broker Jenna Maguire represented Krsnak’s Hempel Cos. on the lease. The firm is leading the successful lease up of the former retail complex, which now includes tenants Herzing University, TEMPO, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, Milwaukee Downtown – Business Improvement District #21 and Good Karma Brands.

The footprint of the development has grown throughout the process, with the purchase of the ASQ Center, Matthew Building and other attached properties. Marking Services is relocating to The Avenue from temporary space in the ASQ Center. A number of preexisting office tenants continue to occupy both the Matthews and ASQ buildings, and other space remains available for lease. The properties are all linked by the skywalk system.

The attached Majestic Building apartments will reopen this spring as the 138-unit Playbill Flats following a complete overhaul. The development team also created the 52-unit Plankinton Clover Apartments from the former retail space in the second story of the Plankinton Arcade.

The success of The Avenue hasn’t happened in a vacuum. The Bradley Symphony Center, which opened in 2021 in a redeveloped theater, provides substantial activation to the street. HUB640 replaced the failing Boston Store and its Chicago developers have landed its own series of office tenants. The Milwaukee Night Market also brings a surge of visitors to the area. It was announced this week that it will return for four nights in 2022.

Strauss Drops Franklin Expansion Plans

In a case of deja vu, Strauss Brands is dropping its plans to expand. The company dropped its plans for a Century City meat-processing plants in 2019 after area alderman Khalif Rainey flipped from supporting the development to opposing it. Now it’s dropped its plans to expand near its current plant in the City of Franklin.

We haven’t covered the play-by-play of the latest development as it’s entirely a suburban affair now, but the latest twist has the company putting its Franklin development site up for sale. Erik S. Hanley was the first to report on the proposed sale, which follows a November email from the company’s private equity ownership group to an opposition group that Strauss would not be building anything on the site. A lawsuit is pending that seeks to stop the project.

Weekly Recap

County Gets $50 Million for Rent Assistance

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley recently announced that the U.S. Treasury has allocated $50 million to the county for emergency rent assistance payments.

Housing officials at the county and a non-profit involved in distributing the emergency assistance say the new funding is critical to continuing the program throughout the rest of the year. The county has been spending on average $1 million a week. “Which is a ton of money, but it really demonstrates the need,” said James Mathy, administrator of the Milwaukee County Housing Division.

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Phillis Wheatley Redevelopment Progressing

The former Phillis Wheatley School at 2442 N. 20th St. will soon reopen as 42 apartments. It’s the latest former Milwaukee Public Schools building to be converted to affordable housing.

A new, four-story building, addressed as 1908 W. Meinecke Ave., will contain an additional 40 apartments. It’s being developed on what was a paved play area at the south end of the 3.8-acre site.

Fifteen of the units will be rented at market rates, with the remainder set aside at reduced rates for those making no more than 60% of the area’s median income. The majority of the financing for the $22 million project comes from low-income-housing tax credits competitively allocated by the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA). Rents are expected to range from $370 to $1,125 per month, with many classrooms directly converting to an apartment.

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Proposed Third Ward Tower Gets Shorter, Wider

A proposed apartment tower for the north end of the Historic Third Ward is now a floor shorter. But the project is still moving forward, with construction expected to begin in August, according to developer Hines.

Hines and architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz first unveiled plans in May 2021 for a 32-floor, 295-unit building at the corner of N. Water St. and E. St. Paul Ave. By September the design, particularly the eight-level parking structure at its base, had been refined and the unit count had grown to 323.

This week, the firm revealed a design that pushes the unit account even higher, to 333, even as the building gets shorter, 31 floors. The parking structure in the building, planned to accommodate 375 cars, would now be eight-feet shorter.

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New Plans Aims To Grow 13th Street

A new neighborhood plan aims to guide the future of the S. 13th St. commercial corridor and surrounding Polonia neighborhood between W. Harrison Ave. and W. Morgan Ave. Action items include better integrating the Kinnickinnic River with the neighborhood, a potential street festival, and traffic calming improvements to improve pedestrian safety and develop a sense of place.

Dubbed the Crisol Corridor, S. 13th St. and the area around it, has seen a growing amount of new investment, a business improvement district formed in 2015 and a generational vision developed to clean up the Kinnickinnic River. The name “crisol” is Spanish for melting pot. The area was first settled by Polish immigrants in the 1870s and by 2010 the area’s population was 62% Hispanic and included a growing Asian community…

More than 50 projects were identified and categorized as either economic development, streets & transportation, general safety, community building, outdoor recreation, stormwater & flood management or placement & art. The plan lays out next steps, potential funding sources, responsible parties, opportunities for coordination and sequencing and project timeframes for each.

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Bronzeville Embracing Artist Housing

A cluster of city-owned, dilapidated homes in Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood is being redeveloped into artist housing.

The Common Council created the Art and Resource Community Hub (ARCH) program in late 2016 to induce artists and developers with $25,000 forgivable loans to work collaboratively to redevelop city-owned homes.

The program found its first taker in artist Vedale Hill and real estate firm Strong Blocks. The duplex at 2406-2408 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave. was redeveloped starting in 2017 as a home for Hill’s family and workspace for the visual artist.

Now Hill, along with Sara Daleiden and Mikal Floyd-Pruitt, are poised to buy the two adjacent buildings, 322-340 W. Meinecke Ave., as housing for more artists.

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City To Pay $50,000 For Church Crushed By Collapsed Building

Buildings aren’t supposed to move, let alone onto other properties. But that’s exactly what happened in Milwaukee’s Arlington Heights neighborhood in May 2020.

A boarded-up, two-story building at 1228-1232 W. Atkinson Ave. collapsed onto the one-story building, Holy Recovery International Church, to the north at 1238 W. Atkinson Ave.

“There was significant debris on the property as well as damage to the roof and coming through the roof of the neighboring property,” said assistant city attorney Jack McNally in presenting a settlement agreement to the Judiciary & Legislation Committee on Jan. 31. A video on the church’s Facebook page shows a substantial portion of the adjoining masonry building having fallen onto the church property.

“Oh wow,” said committee chair Alderman Ashanti Hamilton.

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Deconstruction Program Suspended Again

Milwaukee’s deconstruction program remains stuck in neutral, with not even the city receiving bids for its own work. The latest hope for salvaging the program relies on a potential coalition of smaller contractors.

The policy, first adopted in 2018, required old homes to be effectively dissembled instead of mechanically demolished. The vision was to create jobs, protect the environment and save money by selling, not landfilling, old materials.

But it hasn’t worked out, with different city officials pointing the finger at one another during a November meeting.

On Feb. 8, the Common Council unanimously voted to suspend the deconstruction requirement, which applies to all privately-owned, one-to-four family homes built before 1930, for an additional year. It’s been suspended since 2019.

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Housing Authority Leader Tony Pérez Resigns

The long-time director of the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) resigned Monday.

Antonio (Tony) M. Pérez, 69, served as HACM’s secretary-executive director since 2000.

“It has been my honor to work with Mr. Pérez during his entire tenure with the Housing Authority,” said HACM’s Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Mark Wagner in a statement announcing the resignation. “His commitment to public service and his desire to improve the lives of those most in need in our community is to be commended. He can trust that we will continue letting HACM’s mission be our north star.”

In May 2021, HACM announced Pérez was taking a temporary leave of absence to attend to a medical issue.

Former Common Council President Willie Hines, Jr., who resigned his council seat to become HACM’s assistant director in 2014, has served as acting director since 2021.

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