Two-block Brewers Hill development site as viewed from E. Brown St. and N. Buffum St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A partnership of Hempel Cos. and ICAP Development purchased a two-block development site this week on the eastern edge of Brewers Hill.

The properties, which overlook Downtown from just northwest of the Holton Street Viaduct, are largely vacant and span 3.3 acres.

The site is likely to be redeveloped as housing. State real estate records say the 16 parcels were purchased for $1.75 million.

The rectangular western block is bounded by E. Brown St., E. Reservoir Ave., N. Buffum St. and N. Killian Pl. The larger eastern block is bounded by E. Brown St., an angled portion of E. Reservoir Ave., N. Holton St. and N. Buffum St.

According to statements from the firms, the two new owners decided to jointly bid for the properties and are now considering multiple redevelopment options.

Hempel, based in Eden Praire, MN and led by Josh Krsnak, entered the Milwaukee market with the redevelopment of the Shops of Grand Avenue into The Avenue and has purchased several nearby properties. ICAP is a Milwaukee company led by Brian Adamson. It has developed several suburban commercial properties in the Midwest and recently developed a new Children’s Hospital clinic on W. Forest Home Ave.

Brewers Hill, named for its geography and proximity to Milwaukee’s former downtown breweries, is defined by historic single-family homes. But the development site is largely buffered from those houses by two adaptive reuse condominium developments, Shoeworks Lofts and Cobbler’s Lofts. To the north is a row of early 2000s homes and the Ingram Place Apartments. To the east is Riverwest. Down a steep bluff to the south is the Beerline neighborhood.

There are two industrial buildings on the western block; a one-story, 8,767-square-foot structure at 332 E. Reservoir Ave. and a 41,792-square-foot structure located behind the smaller building with an address of 1929 N. Buffum St. The buildings have 1920 and 1918 construction dates in city records, though much more recent metal paneling makes it impossible to determine if any historical charm is included.

The buildings were once part of Peterson Cutting Die Co., then Durant Manufacturing Co. (which was purchased by Cutler-Hammer), Optics for Industry and ultimately In-Place Machining.

It was an affiliate of In-Place and predecessor Optics for Industry that assembled the development site, transferring it to Light Ray Development in 2004. Light Ray company’s registered agent is Daniel Eder, son of In-Place and Optics founder Ralph Eder. In-Place’s Milwaukee plant today is at 3811 N. Holton St. The company makes house calls for complicated jobs – like fixing ships as they float through the Panama Canal or emergency repairs at power plants.

Before selling, Light Ray made it easier to develop the site.

A 1,534-square-foot house on one of the lots, 419 E. Brown St., was demolished earlier this year. City assessment records give it an initial construction date of 1890. Light Ray has owned that property since 2007.

The demolition cleared the site of any structures, other than the two industrial buildings on the western block and a residential garage on the eastern block. There are however three homes and a vacant lot on the eastern block that are owned by individuals and not part of the sale. The three homes are contiguous and face Downtown, overlooking the bluff. The vacant lot covers 1,240 square feet. All are on E. Reservoir Avenue.

To the west of the development site, two sizable vacant lots were once slated for market-rate housing by Royal Capital Group. But nothing has publicly advanced on that project since the city granted zoning approval in 2017.

Site Photos

Properties

• 327-329 E. Brown St.
• 419 E. Brown St.
• 423 E. Brown St.
• 427 E. Brown St.
• 433 E. Brown St.
• 1914 N. Buffum St.
• 1918 N. Buffum St.
• 1929 N. Buffum St.
• 1934 N. Buffum St.
• 1946 N. Buffum St.
• 1952 N. Buffum St.
• 1929 N. Holton St.
• 1933 N. Holton St.
• 1951 N. Holton St.
• 332 E. Reservoir Ave.
• 414 E. Reservoir Ave.

Weekly Recap

Midtown Vacant Lot To Become Substance Abuse Treatment Center

A residential treatment facility for males battling substance abuse issues will expand under a proposal endorsed Tuesday by a Common Council committee.

Serenity Inns would purchase two vacant lots at N. 28th St. and W. Brown St. to develop a 14-bed, $2.4 million facility.

The nonprofit operates a transitional living facility across the street at 2825 W. Brown St.

“What would be different about this facility is it would be residential, evidence-based treatment,” said Serenity CEO Kenneth Ginlack, Sr. to the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee. Patients in the new facility would qualify for Medicaid coverage and stay for longer periods of time.

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Milwaukee Tool Paints Downtown Red

It’s hard to miss Milwaukee Tool‘s new downtown office building, once obfuscated in planning documents as “Red Beacon.”

The five-story office building now features two massive Milwaukee Tool company logos backed by even larger red backdrops.

It’s also getting increasingly easy Downtown to spot a Milwaukee Tool employee, the company’s logo is hard to miss on their apparel.

The Milwaukee office represents a major shift for the company, which decamped for Brookfield in 1965 and moved most of its manufacturing to Mississippi in 1973. Now it’s more than a decade into an aggressive growth period that has seen it add thousands of employees in Wisconsin.

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City Could Regulate Airbnb, Other Services

Milwaukee could add new regulations to properties listed on Airbnb or other short-term rental services.

The Common Council, led by council members Milele A. Coggs and Mark Chambers, Jr., is requesting a number of city departments explore what legal leverage the city has.

“When I looked into it, the response I got was the state took away all of our local control,” said Alderman Michael Murphy on Tuesday during a meeting of the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee. A 2017 state law change fully legalized the hotel-alternative services.

Snce the law change, the services have proliferated. Murphy’s backing the request for a new look to determine where the city has control.

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Riverwest Affordable Housing Development To Get City Subsidy

The City of Milwaukee would chip in $1.25 million to get a $30.4 million affordable housing development moving forward.

The Riverwest Workforce Apartments and Food Accelerator is a proposed 91-unit apartment complex with a first-floor commercial kitchen planned for a vacant lot at the intersection of E. North Avenue and N. Commerce Street.

In addition to enabling the long-planned apartment building to move forward, the city’s selected financing mechanism would trigger a host of contracting requirements requiring the use of small businesses and city residents and enable the neighborhood-preference anti-displacement policy.

The proposal received a unanimous endorsement Thursday from the board of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee (RACM).

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A Plan To Save Third Ward Swing Bridge

Architect John Everitt has a big plan to repurpose the disused railroad swing bridge between the Historic Third Ward and the Harbor District as a marquee public gathering place in Milwaukee and a year-round cafe and bar.

Everitt wow-ed the Historic Third Ward Architectural Review Board Wednesday with the quality of the plan, created as his graduate thesis to earn his master’s in architecture in 2022 from UW-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Planning.

The 800-ton bridge, which is believed to have sat idle since at least the 1980s, would be rehabilitated so it can again swing and would also gain two new pedestrian paths, mirroring the railroad tracks that once ran across it, as well as a second level with a central cafe and bar. A structure would be built in the middle of the bridge to house the cafe and bathrooms.

“We can create a unique experience that can only be found in Milwaukee and set precedent for the rest of the country. These urban relics are Milwaukee’s heritage and can be adapted for use once more,” said Everitt. He compared its potential reuse to The High Line in New York City, an elevated park created from a former rail line, the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis and the Reichtstag government building in Berlin.

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Fall Construction Planned for Downtown Dog Park, Brewery

Things are progressing towards a spring 2024 grand opening for the planned dog park in Downtown.

The project involves building a publicly-accessible dog park under Interstate 794 on the west side of the Milwaukee River and the development of a dog-friendly Foxtown Brewing complex, known as Foxtown Landing, to the south.

The City Plan Commission is scheduled to review final riverwalk designs on June 26. Construction would start on both components this fall, with the dog park portion opening in the spring and the three-story brewery complex following several months later.

The Milwaukee Downtown and the Historic Third Ward business improvement districts have pursued the dog park since 2020, and, in November 2022, announced Fromm Family Pet Food as the naming-rights partner and future neighbor. Mequon-based Fromm Neiman Brands owns the pet food company and the brewery.

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Milwaukee Will Ban Most New Vape Shops

It’s going to be very difficult to open a new electronic cigarette (vape) store in Milwaukee. A new zoning framework would substantially limit where new stores could open, adding prohibitions based on proximity to schools, parks and childcare centers.

Only a handful of intersections or commercial corridors would be eligible for new stores.

It’s a change advocates hope will reduce the number of people, particularly teenagers, that use the often-flavored tobacco products. A 2022 FDA survey found that 14% of high school students and 3.3% of middle school students reported using vape products in the past 30 days.

“I think it’s good policy and it will make Milwaukee a better place,” said Alderman Jonathan Brostoff to the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee Tuesday.

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The New State Will Have New Cafe

A new cafe is coming to Milwaukee’s Near West Side as part of a larger proposal to redevelop the long-shuttered State Theater into a music venue known as The New State.

The owners of the nearby Daddy’s Soul Food & Grille will open Dulaney’s at 2608-2610 W. State St., a one-story commercial building next to the theater.

“This time next year it should be open,” said developer John Hennessy, one of the leaders of the New State effort, to the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee on Tuesday morning.

Since 2014, husband-and-wife team Bennie and Angela Smith have operated the highly-regarded Daddy’s at 754 N. 27th St., two blocks to the south. The couple opened another restaurant, Daddy’s on Bluemound, in 2021. But Dulaney’s is described as a cafe.

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Big Delay in Downtown Concert Halls

Everything was coming up roses for FPC Live, the Madison-based subsidiary of Live Nation which had proposed to build a $50 million two-concert hall complex in the Deer District, in cooperation with the Milwaukee Bucks.

On November 1 the Common Council unanimously approved a zoning change needed to build the complex. It seemed a happy ending to a nearly year-long process that saw FPC first propose to build the complex in the Historic Third Ward on land owned by Summerfest, only to run into controversy.

“We’re excited to continue the process moving forward,” declared Joel Plant, CEO of FPC Live’s parent company, Frank Productions. He predicted the company could break ground as early as December and that the hall would be open before the Republican National Convention in July 2024. That was enough to convince the Biz Times to name FPC the “Corporation of the Year.”

But there was no groundbreaking in December or in the next several months. In early April, Plant told reporter Piet Levy the project had been delayed by skyrocketing construction costs which has “dramatically” increased the estimated $50 million cost.

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