County Wants Ideas To Save Coggs Building

Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center, 1220 W. Vliet St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

It’s possible the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center, 1220 W. Vliet St., won’t be torn down after all.

Milwaukee County has begun looking for proposals for the 212,000-square-foot building that has long served the county’s human services functions. It’s not soliciting projects; rather, there is an open call for redevelopment ideas called a Request for Information (RFI). This process acts as a potential precursor to a formal request for proposals from developers.

The county is planning the development of a new $42 million, 60,000-square-foot square foot, human services building just north of Coggs on W. Cherry St. between N. 12th St. and N. 13th St. That building is expected to be finished by late 2024 or early 2025. But the preliminary plans required the demolition of the Coggs building to create a parking lot. The outcome of this RFI could lead the county to alter these plans and potentially determine a new future for the Coggs building.

The county expects it will need approximately 250 parking spots for the new DHHS building. Currently, there are 127. “The County may demolish the Coggs building to provide the additional parking spots needed if there are no suitable and feasible ideas for redevelopment that also meet the county’s parking needs,” says the RFI. It asks any developer to suggest ideas, including using other nearby properties, to get to 250 spaces while maintaining the Coggs building.

The county is looking for “suggestions for partnership, purchase, and redevelopment that contemplate new uses of the property, including demolition and/or construction of new structure(s), or may submit suggestions for ways to use the property as-is with little or no modification to the existing building,” according to the RFI.

The L-shaped Coggs parcel is approximately 2.26 acres. An adjacent 0.78-acre rectangular parcel is also available for development or parking as part of any future project.

In 2021, officials in charge of reviewing and maintaining county facilities produced a report that found the Coggs building had, financially speaking, gone beyond its useful life for the county. With approximately $46 million in estimated maintenance needed over the next two decades, and the looming departure of the building’s largest tenant (the state welfare office) it was recommended that the county sell the building.

The Coggs building was built between 1910 and 1923 and served as a Schuster’s Department Store until 1961. Two years later, it was purchased by the county to house the Department of Welfare. Since then, the building has continued to serve as a human services hub. But the building has shown its age for years and lacks some of the modern aging and disability upgrades expected of a facility that serves many of Milwaukee’s poor, disabled and aging residents.

“We’ve never had a building that was designed to deliver health and human services,” Shakita LaGrant-McClain, director of DHHS, previously said. “This was a department store… And just yesterday, I had to help an older adult out of the back hallway.”

DHHS officials have repeatedly said it’s important to the county’s mission to eliminate racial health disparities that it maintain a human services footprint in the King Park neighborhood where the Coggs building is located. The idea is to stay close to the population being served. When the state moved the Milwaukee Enrollment Services (MilES) office from the Coggs building to the city’s Northwest Side in late 2022, an advocacy group for people in poverty blasted the decision and filed a civil rights complaint.

The county has also committed to a number of investments in the neighborhood, including the Mental Health Emergency Center, 1525 N. 12th street, which opened in 2022; a $6.5 million affordable housing project that is expected to build approximately 120 new homes; and a $3 million investment in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, 1531 W. Vliet St.

The county has scheduled a walk-through of the building for interested parties on Feb. 13.

RFI responses are due March 6.

A copy of the RFI is available on Urban Milwaukee.

Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center