Mitchell Street Building Will Be Picked Up and Moved

515 W. Historic Mitchell St. (center) and 529 W. Historic Mitchell St. (right). Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A month after questioning the wisdom of doing so, funeral home director and former alderman Jim Witkowiak is poised to try something quite rare for Milwaukee: picking up and moving a building.

Witkowiak will hire a contractor to pick up the 139-year-old, two-story building at 515 W. Historic Mitchell St. and move it two lots east, approximately 50 feet.

“After extensive research and testing, it’s like I said when I was here last time ‘nothing is impossible,’ we will attempt to move the building,” said Witkowiak to the Historic Preservation Commission on Aug. 7. “I don’t agree with it 100%. I don’t want to make a big issue in front of the council on why we shouldn’t do this if you think it would establish precedent.”

Witkowiak and his architect, Luis Barbosa Perches of BMR Design Group, would prefer to preserve the facade of the 2,800-square-foot building and construct a new structure behind the relocated facade. But the commission’s staff said that would create a replica structure disallowed by the city’s historic preservation ordinance.

“I think historic preservation would be a lot further along if they would allow something like this because it would have a much better quality building on the street than just moving those old sticks,” said Witkowiak. “If you go anything from the front facade to the back of the building, it’s just old wood, mostly rotted.”

The entire Historic Mitchell Street commercial corridor is locally protected as a historic district.

Witkowiak wants the space the building currently occupies to create a plaza for his funeral home, 529 W. Historic Mitchell St., located to the west. In July, he said he would lease the structure, whether rebuilt or relocated, to a flower shop that would serve his funeral home and St. Stanislaus Church across the street.

“We’ll build a new foundation, we’ll move the building and we’ll set it down there as is,” said Witkowiak in August. “You can all volunteer to come over and help me too.”

“We’ll pull the ropes,” said Alderman Robert Bauman, Witkowiak’s one-time colleague, over laughter.

The commission held off on acting on the application in July because it wanted more information from a structural engineer following claims by Witkowiak and Barbosa that the structure would collapse.

“The building itself is nothing more than a shell,” said Barbosa in July. “If you make any attempts to move it in any direction, I think it will collapse.”

“Structurally, had I not jumped in there a few years ago, that building would have fell over,” said Witkowiak in July. He said he’s installed 27 hydraulic jacks to support the vacant and made other repairs.

The funeral home director initially secured approval in 2016 to move the building and construct a rear addition. Similar to his current proposal, a plaza would have been constructed and a parking lot reconfigured to create an overflow space for visitation and funeral guests that currently block the sidewalk. He’s now dropping that rear addition, a banquet hall, but maintaining the rest of the plan.

A handful of Milwaukee structures have been moved in recent years. A portion of a house on W. Layton Avenue was trucked approximately two miles to S. Howell Avenue. A developer, working near the Marquette University campus also relocated a house a few blocks northwest to clear the way for a new sorority house to be built in its place.

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Related Legislation: File 230322