The ‘Red Castle’ Is For Sale
Schuster Mansion at 32nd and Wells listed for $2.2 million. Plus: Recapping the week's real estate news.
Schuster Mansion, 3209 W. Wells St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
A sizable piece of Milwaukee history is on the market.
The Schuster Mansion, 3209 W. Wells St., is listed for sale for $2.2 million. Currently configured as a bed and breakfast, the approximately 9,300-square-foot house has 18 total rooms (eight bedrooms).
The three-story castle was a single-family home until Schuster died in 1922 and his widow sold the property in 1924. From then until 2001 it served as an apartment building, one of many historic west side mansions to be carved up. In the past two decades a series of owners did their best to restore the home to its original grandeur.
The current owners, Richard and Laura Sue Mosier, have operated the bed and breakfast since 2008. They purchased the property from Arne and Eunice Vedum, who initiated the bed-and-breakfast conversion.
You can try it before you buy it. The bed and breakfast is currently offering rooms starting at $120 per night.
The inn offers four suites and three single rooms. An innkeeper’s quarters is located on the top floor.
If you don’t want to spend the night, the inn also offers a regularly scheduled tea service. Need a few period-appropriate topics to discuss with your friends? “The Gilded Age” is currently airing on HBO Max and stars former Renaissance Theaterworks actress Carrie Coon.
Two other bed and breakfast mansions are located in the surrounding Concordia neighborhood. The Manderley Bed and Breakfast is located at 3026 W. Wells St. and the Brumder Mansion is a block south at 3046 W. Wisconsin Ave.
George and his brother John, who briefly lived in the ‘castle,’ have no known connection to the Schuster’s Department Store that had multiple locations in Milwaukee. The fact likely confused Milwaukeeans then as it does now, with both the tobacco and department store businesses moving or expanding multiple times in the era the home was built.
Weekly Recap
New Food Hall Quietly Taking Shape
A new food hall is under construction in downtown Milwaukee, but it’s possible you’ll never step foot inside it.
That’s because the firm behind it, California-based KBD Holdings, is designing it primarily as a “ghost kitchen.” The concept relies on stripping a restaurant down to just its kitchen and focusing on online sales through platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats.
KBD, which has yet to publicly comment on the project, purchased the one-story, 5,746-square-foot building at 733-737 N. Milwaukee St. in 2021 for $850,000, and is now building out the space for future tenants.
And while Zarletti next door is a single restaurant with a full dining room, KBD will pack as many as 19 restaurants into a series of approximately 200-square-foot kitchens.
Willie Hines, Jr. Named Head of Housing Authority
Willie Hines, Jr. has come a long way. So far that he’s back where it all began.
Born in 1964, Hines lived with a large family in the Hillside public housing development just north of Downtown. One of 10 siblings, he would go on to graduate from Marquette University, spend a few years in the private sector, take a role with the Milwaukee Urban League and work as an aide for Congressman Jim Moody. In 1996, at the age of 31, Hines was elected to the Milwaukee Common Council and rose to become council president in 2004.
Hines, 57, was confirmed Thursday as the new head of the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee, the state’s largest affordable housing provider.
“On behalf of the Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners, we are proud to announce Mr. Hines as our next Secretary-Executive Director. His remarkable talents, collaborative and engaging management style, and extensive experience make him an ideal choice to lead HACM in advancing its mission. We look forward to his leadership as we work towards our collective goal of providing high-quality, affordable housing and opportunities to thrive for the people we serve,” said board chair Mark Wagner in a statement.
City Braces For Fallout From January’s Eviction Wave
The City of Milwaukee will face a punishing fallout from Berrada Properties Management’s recent deluge of evictions.
That fallout will mean not just pain for the families affected, but will impact neighborhoods, agencies that deal with displaced families and the need for funding as those evicted scramble to get roofs over their heads.
This domino effect from Berrada’s evictions was the focus Wednesday of the Common Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee, which met virtually to discuss anti-eviction strategies.
The consensus: There will be pain ahead and a pressing need for various agencies and the city to deal with the aftershocks.
Feedback Sought On Bay View Park’s Design
The Department of Public Works and Alderwoman Marina Dimitrijevic have a plan for how to redevelop Zillman Park, 2168 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., into a “multi-functional and inter-generational public space.” Now they would like your feedback. An online survey is available through March 15.
The triangular park, bordered by E. Ward St., E. Archer Ave. and S. Kinnickinnic Ave., contains 0.7 acres of green space. Beyond benches and trees, the only amenities currently in the park are a Bublr Bikes docking station, a historical marker honoring Bay View’s immigrant industrial workers and the 12-foot-tall, welded-steel sculpture titled “Bud” by artist and former Bay View resident Carl Billingsley.
The redevelopment plan would preserve the mature trees while attempting to reconfigure the park into a mix of green space and plazas.
“Some edges are well defined, with seat walls providing space between the ground planes. Other edges are open, mimicking the continuous nature of the existing park. Plaza spaces are created by widening of the paths allowing them to be flexible for planned, pop-up, and spontaneous events,” says a design document.
Former North Milwaukee H.S. Redevelopment Inches Forward
The Historic Preservation Commission unanimously endorsed an attempt to designate a former school as a national and state-recognized historic structure. Gorman & Company is proposing the designation as a means to access historic preservation tax credits that would support the building’s conversion to affordable housing.
The developer secured city approval to purchase the property in late 2020, and secured low-income housing tax credits in 2021 to advance the project. Plans call for 64 units of affordable housing within the 152,240-square-foot building, with the layouts split evenly between one- and two-bedroom floor plans. The affordable housing developer would add 11 three-bedroom townhomes to the site, 5372 N. 37th St. Gorman would pay $600,000 for the property.
It was one of many projects backed by Governor Tony Evers in a February grant announcement. Evers is allocating $1 million from the state’s American Rescue Plan Act award to the project because of increased construction costs.
The school, last known as Edison Middle School, has been vacant since Milwaukee Public Schools closed it in 2008. But MPS did not build the structure. It was built in 1924 as North Milwaukee High School for the then-separate Village of North Milwaukee. But by 1929, when the building’s first addition was completed, the village was annexed by the City of Milwaukee.
Third Ward Zoning Change On Hold
A proposal to rezone the south edge of the Historic Third Ward near the festival grounds appears to have stalled.
Alderman Robert Bauman requested the Department of City Development (DCD) to prepare the change, even after learning it wouldn’t apply to a controversial, proposed concert venue from FPC Live.
“I think just from a general planning standpoint it would be wise to make this land consistent with the rest of the land in the Third Ward,” said Bauman in January.
His proposal would change the zoning on several properties from “Industrial – Mixed” to the downtown C9G designation that governs the area north of E. Corcoran Ave. In addition, it would require theaters proposed for C9G zones with capacities in excess of 2,000 guests to get approval from the Board of Zoning Approvals. The FPC Live proposal already has a “vested right” to the existing zoning rules according to the City Attorney’s Office, but the change would prevent future theaters from being built without special approval.
State Has Large Racial Gap In Homeownership
While Milwaukee has long had a reputation as a racially segregated city with significant housing inequality, a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum shows that these disparities extend well beyond its borders.
Using 2019 U.S. Census data, the new study examines homeownership among Black, Hispanic and white residents of the state’s five most populous cities: Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.
“What we found basically is that the racial gaps in homeownership are even greater outside of Milwaukee than in Milwaukee,” said Joe Peterangelo, the report’s author and a senior researcher with the Wisconsin Policy Forum. “It points to the need for statewide efforts to address it.”
Of the five cities, Milwaukee had the lowest racial gaps in homeownership. There, 55.8 percent of white households own their home compared to 37.5 percent of Hispanic households and 27 percent of Black households.
UWM Plan To Raze Columbia Hospital Stalled
The Historic Preservation Commission delayed UW-Milwaukee’s plan to demolish the oldest portions of Columbia Hospital, or so it thinks.The commission unanimously granted temporary historic designation to the former hospital, 3321 N. Maryland Ave. The measure is effectively a 180-day injunction with a requirement for the commission to review a permanent designation within that time frame.
UWM objected to the designation. It first held a public meeting about its plan in January 2020 and in February 2020 received approval from the State of Wisconsin Building Commission to proceed with the demolition project. It’s part of its plan to redevelop what it calls the Northwest Quadrant Student Health Services facility.
“Just so everyone knows, if there is a legal dispute of their jurisdiction here, they could proceed with demolition and let the chips fall where they may,” said commissioner Alderman Robert Bauman.
“I am definitely concerned about that,” said Ald. Nik Kovac, whose district includes the university.
Help Plan The Century City Park
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) would like community feedback on how to develop a new, 10-acre green space in Century City.
Known as the West Basin, the project is intended to capture 31 million gallons of stormwater during a storm as part of a strategy of reducing flooding of W. Capitol Dr. and the surrounding neighborhoods near N. 35th St. But a substantial publicly-accessible component is planned as part of redeveloping the former industrial site.
MMSD has prepared three conceptual options that would complement the basin. Each has a mix of trails and community space, with a focus on either play, nature or gathering.
The site, 4220 N. 35th St., is bordered by Lincoln Creek to the north, the 30th Street Corridor rail line to the east, N. Hopkins St. to the south and N. 35th St. to the west. A 20-foot-deep basin, which would fill with water from rainstorms, is included at the core of each plan.
Falcon Bowl Owners Seek A Proprietor
The neighborhood investment co-op that bought the venerable Falcon Bowl in Riverwest has begun looking for someone to run the place.
In December 2021, the Riverwest Investment Cooperative closed on a purchase of the bar at 801-803 E. Clarke St., which includes a bowling alley and an event hall. The cooperative is a member-owned investment group founded in 2003 to give Riverwest residents some control over the development of their neighborhood.
On March 1, the organization officially released a request for proposals to operate the business. The current operator, R. Lynn Okopinski, is planning to retire this year.
The co-op purchased the building to preserve it as a neighborhood institution that has “played host to countless neighborhood weddings, memorial services, quinceañera celebrations, spaghetti dinners, and bowling nights,” as described in the RFP.
Supreme Court Upholds Brown County Sales Tax
In a 5-2 decision on Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Brown County’s 0.5% sales tax is legal.
A challenge to the tax had been brought by a local organization, the Brown County Taxpayers’ Association (BCTA), and the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, arguing that under state law sales tax revenues could only be used to reduce property taxes and not fund new spending.
In 2018, the county instituted the tax to fund new capital spending, including road projects, library improvements and public safety, among other projects the County Board found “necessary” for the “long-term viability of the county.” The board said that using the sales tax to fund the projects prevents it from having to raise property taxes.
In the majority decision, which was written by Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and joined by Justices Rebecca Dallet, Brian Hagedorn, Jill Karofsky and Patience Roggensack, the court decided that the county was correct and the BCTA was wrong in arguing that sales tax revenues must correspond with a “dollar-for-dollar” reduction in property taxes.
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