Talgo Extending Lease In Century City
Plus: A recap of the week's real estate news.
Commuter rail and subway cars awaiting refurbishment in Talgo’s Milwaukee facility. File photo by Jeramey Jannene.
A Spanish train equipment manufacturer is extending its lease on its Milwaukee plant, even though it’s been nearly a decade since any new equipment was made there.
Talgo has been a tenant in the city-owned Century City business park since 2010 and according to a city report now has 120 employees at its facility, 3533 N. 27th St.
Since 2017, the plant has been used for the rehabilitation of non-Talgo passenger rail equipment. To date, the company has landed more than $200 million in contracts from two California agencies to restore subway and commuter rail cars in Milwaukee.
“They are growing their workforce and host regular job fairs with Employ Milwaukee,” said Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee project manager Benjamin Timm in presenting the new five-year lease to the RACM board on Feb. 17.
The company leases a former Tower Automotive factory previously acquired and partially renovated by the city. City assessment records indicate it has 498,672 square feet of space.
“They’re not always using the full factory space all at once,” said Timm of the flow of equipment in and out of the building. The revised lease grants them use of the entire building instead of a set square footage amount, which the RACM representative said would be easier to administer for both parties.
Two rail spurs run directly into the building from the 30th Street Corridor rail line. Timm said Canadian Pacific‘s sale of the line to short-line operator Watco has aided Talgo because the new owner is a smaller company that is more responsive to Talgo’s needs.
By the end of the lease, Talgo’s plant could be joined by at least one new building in the business park. A real estate investment group affiliate of Good City Brewing is pursuing plans to build a new 50,000-square-foot, flexible industrial building on a portion of the large vacant lot located north of the Talgo plant. The investment group already fully leases one building, Century City 1. Several dozen acres of developable land remain available.
The RACM board unanimously approved the new lease.
2019 Plant Photos
Weekly Recap
Marquette’s Green Monster
No, Marquette University is not building a replica of a Boston baseball stadium on its campus. But change is afoot.
The university is building a $60 million home for its College of Business Administration and innovation leadership programs.
The university is billing the 100,000-square-foot facility as the anchor to the campus’ western gateway. The new building will include a sizable open atrium, classrooms, faculty office space, lab and study spaces and event space.
City To Conduct Historic Survey Of Modern Churches
A new study will attempt to catalog the history of Milwaukee’s newer religious structures.
The full-time staff of the Historic Preservation Commission is receiving a $46,500 grant from the Wisconsin Historical Society, entitled “Modern Houses of Worship: Not Necessarily Steeples,” that would fund a citywide study of churches built between 1920 and 1980.
“This survey is intended to comprehensively catalog Milwaukee’s Modern religious architecture, with an eye towards documenting Milwaukee’s Black and non-Christian religious histories,” says a grant analysis report.
The survey, to be conducted by a consultant, is anticipated to include 200 structures. An earlier study, conducted 26 years ago, focused on only the oldest churches in the city.
Mandel Delaying Portfolio Because of Market Saturation
A proposed apartment tower overlooking Lake Michigan is being delayed until at least 2025.
The Mandel Group unveiled a plan in 2016 to develop a 24-story apartment tower, dubbed Portfolio, at 1350 N. Prospect Ave. The building, in its original format, was to contain a mix of studio, one, two and three bedroom units targeted at empty nesters.
The site, located at the eastern end of E. Ogden Ave., was formerly owned by Milwaukee County. As a result of a development agreement that gave the Mandel Group ownership of the parcel, the public has received annual reports on what the firm is planning to do with the site.
The latest report shows that Mandel plans to sit tight for quite some time. The firm cited three other developments that it feels would compete for the same tenants, The Couture, Ascent and 333 N. Water St., as a reason to wait.
Home Prices Still Rising
It’s still a seller’s market for homes in Wisconsin, with prices rising and the number of homes for sale falling.
The latest report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association found the median price of a home in Wisconsin in January was $231,000, a 10 percent increase from January 2021.
The total number of homes listed for sale in Wisconsin fell 14.6 percent between January 2021 and this January, which helped lead to a year-to-year drop in sales of 4.2 percent last month.
Many Housing Projects Get Funding Boost
A number of proposed affordable housing developments received an injection of funding Wednesday via a grant announcement from Governor Tony Evers.
Evers, visiting Milwaukee City Hall, announced that the City of Milwaukee will receive $15 million and Milwaukee County will receive $10.5 million from the state’s neighborhood investment fund grant program.
“These funds will help folks here in the greater Milwaukee area and help address challenges facing workers, families and communities,” said the governor.
Beyond housing, additional funding would go towards bolstering early childhood education and public safety projects. The city and county will provide the funding to the different projects.
Legislature Approves Selling Key Bronzeville Site
A proposal to redevelop a significant Bronzeville property at the intersection of N. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. and W. North Ave. cleared its first major hurdle Tuesday.
The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee approved selling the 3.4-acre property to the nonprofit Bronzeville Center for the Arts (BCA). The organization hopes to build a “world-class art and cultural center” on the site.
The conceptual plans call for a 50,000-square-foot facility, including an auditorium and exhibition space, that would be a showcase for Black artists. The organization said it would host community meetings as part of refining the vision for the site. Additional ideas considered for the complex include a sculpture garden, classrooms and gathering spaces. Wilson & Ford Design Studios produced a conceptual rendering of the plan.
Council Could End Fight Over Couture Provision
One of the more unusual proxy wars inside City Hall could be coming to an end.
A Common Council committee voted 4-0-1 to recommend halting the third-party review process designed to determine whether Alderman Robert Bauman and the council acted appropriately in modifying a tax incremental financing development agreement for The Couture apartment tower.
Halting the effort is opposed by City Attorney Tearman Spencer and Acting Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
Spencer, in March 2021, refused to sign off on the agreement for the $190 million project after Bauman added an amendment that required the development team to contribute $100,000 to the anti-displacement fund administered by the nonprofit MKE United.
Huge River House Expansion Advancing
The owners of a 2.87-acre vacant lot along the Milwaukee River are planning to develop a two-building, apartment complex.
River House, 1785 N. Water St., opened in 2017 with 243 apartments spread over two buildings. But an additional two buildings were always planned to the east.
Now, according to a Department of City Development representative, that second phase is moving forward.
The Fall and Rise of Bronzeville
Located just two miles north of downtown, Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood thrived for decades with vibrant small businesses and a nightlife scene that drew people from across racial lines.
But, as was the case for many of the country’s minority neighborhoods, urban renewal programs of the 1960s and 1970s destroyed much of Bronzeville. Freeway construction in the 1960s led to the loss of more than 8,000 homes, churches and businesses — scattering the once tight-knit community across Milwaukee.
Press Release: Marquette Class of 1995 alumnus Marcus Lemonis donates $15 million to create state-of-the-art Lemonis Center for Student Success on campus
Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell announced [Saturday] that alumnus Marcus Lemonis, star of HGTV’s The Renovator, CNBC’s The Profit and chairman and CEO of Camping World, and his wife have donated a $15 million gift to create the Lemonis Center for Student Success.
The Lemonis Center for Student Success will provide wraparound services for students across all majors, academic abilities, and backgrounds to enrich and expand student opportunities — a primary objective in the university’s Time to Rise fundraising campaign. Lemonis is a 1995 Marquette alumnus of the Helen Way Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, and he competed in javelin on the Track & Field team from 1991 to 1995.
In his Presidential Address last year, President Lovell announced the university’s new Student Success Initiative as a top strategic priority. Lemonis has generously stepped forward to enhance and scale Marquette’s efforts to drive this priority forward in the most visible way possible. In recognition of this leadership gift, Marquette will rename Memorial Library to the Lemonis Center for Student Success and house the new center in the highly visible, centrally located space on West Wisconsin Avenue and 13th Street.
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