Construction Underway On First Iron District Building

Michigan Street Commons. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The first new building in the Iron District is going up, but it’s not a flashy, public-facing component. Instead, it’s a building that several Iron District workers might someday call home.

The core of Bear Development‘s Michigan Street Commons is now visible to drivers cruising the Marquette Interchange. The 99-unit apartment building, 915 W. Michigan St., backs up to the interchange.

The development is being subsidized by federal low-income housing tax credits. Bear secured the competitively-awarded credits in spring 2021. For a period of 30 years, all of the apartments in the $27.5 million development would be set aside at below-market rates for households making no more than 60% of Milwaukee County’s median income. Twenty-nine of the units will have a max income of 50% of the area median income.

The city is to provide $1.8 million via a tax incremental financing (TIF) district to close a gap in the five-story building’s financing package. The city is to provide Bear the funding incrementally, with interest, based on increased property tax revenue generated by the building itself. The city routinely uses TIF districts now to enable affordable housing developments to move forward without taking on the risk of a failed project.

Bear’s contracting arm, Construction Management Associates, is leading the general contracting. Kahler Slater is serving as the project architect.

The larger development is slated to eventually include an outdoor soccer stadium, hotel and a second apartment building, constructed atop a largely-vacant office building. The second apartment building replaces a proposed concert venue that would have competed with a new venue near Fiserv Forum. After being announced within weeks of one another and described in glowing terms by those proposing them, ground hasn’t been broken on either project.

The soccer stadium, and a proposed soccer team, continue to inch forward. But state funding for a portion of the stadium’s cost was blocked by Republicans on the Joint Committee on Finance earlier this year.

Bear completed the 49-unit 700 Lofts affordable apartment complex in 2015 at 700 W. Michigan St., just across the street from the Iron District site.

Along N. 6th Street, the opposite end of the Iron District site, deconstruction of a former Ramada hotel is now complete.

Photos

Apartment Building Rendering and Site Plan