Plan Commission Rejects Midtown Walmart Redevelopment Plan

Vacant Wal-Mart at 5825 W. Hope Ave. Photo by Alison Peterson.

The City Plan Commission shot down a self-storage-driven redevelopment of the former Walmart store at the Midtown Center shopping complex.

The unanimous vote followed the recommendations of the Department of City Development (DCD) and area Alderman Mark Chambers, Jr.

An affiliate of Iowa-based Affordable Family Storage (AFS) acquired the 15.24-acre property, 5825 W. Hope Ave., in 2022 for $3.28 million. In early 2023, Urban Milwaukee reported that the company had plans to use the rear of the building for an indoor self-storage facility and would create four commercial storefronts for other tenants at the front of the building. A portion of the parking lot was to become a dog park and food truck park.

“We really need the big picture embrace of what this could be rather than a 150,000-square-foot, empty box,” said attorney Brian Randall of Amundsen Davis to the plan commission on Sept. 25. Walmart shuttered the store in 2016. “It won’t become a big box retail site ever again. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now.”

But despite repeated meetings with city officials, Affordable Family Storage has yet to find full support for its plans. It needs plan commission approval to move forward because self storage is prohibited in the zoning district that regulates the shopping center.

AFS dropped the dog park and food truck plans and explored affordable housing at the alderman’s request, but settled on replacing a portion of the parking lot with grass. Randall said the site could be developed in the future, either with commercial development or housing.

Chambers, first elected in November, said he thinks of Midtown Center as the “central hub of the near northwest side of Milwaukee” and wants to see it succeed.

“The storage facility, it kills development,” said the alderman. He said he could see that at AFS’s Cudahy facility, which filled a former grocery store. “The plan as it is right now, I cannot support it.”

DCD’s concerns revolve around the lack of specificity in the plans for everything around the self-storage component.

“Based on the information submitted by the applicant, we are unable to fully conclude if the proposal fully complies with the design standards and are therefore recommending denial. In many cases, items that are noted in the applicant’s narrative are inconsistent with or missing from the actual plans,” said DCD planning manager Sam Leichtling. “DCD staff has provided some feedback to the applicant on these items at various times to adjust or amend their exhibits to better align with the [zoning] standards, but the applicant has ultimately elected to proceed to seek approval for the version of the plans that are in your file.”

Leichtling said DCD’s concerns included a failure to justify why a permitted use, such as housing, commercial or a medical office, couldn’t be developed, insufficient details on landscaping and insufficient information on how the storefronts would be designed, constructed and marketed.

Randall said his client had yet to market the commercial spaces because it had not secured approval to build them.

Trent Overhue, a co-owner of AFS, said exclusive agreements for certain types of retailers, including grocery stores, shoe stores and gyms, at the entire complex make it tough to find tenants. “Essentially, every tenant in there has their own exclusivity,” said the developer. “It is an incredibly tough building to try to re-tenant.”

But he was optimistic the project would work out.

“We feel that it will be a home run project and it will significantly clean up that area,” said Overhue. “You will not know that a storage facility exists in the back.”

Overhue said DCD has changed its feedback each time in what he said was a year-and-a-half process that involved 10 meetings. He said $40,000 was spent on a study of whether affordable housing would work on a portion of the site, but his firm couldn’t move forward with it yet because of uncertainty with financing.

Randall said the market would support the self-storage component and that it would be entirely indoors and out of sight. “This area, by national averages, is underserved,” said the attorney.

But the arguments didn’t sway the commission.

“As a resident of the area, of course I would love to see something developed there, I live not even two blocks from there,” said Commissioner Catrina Crane. “A self storage [business] for this neighborhood would just not fit.”

“What I’m struggling with the most, from my architectural standpoint, is it’s not a valid submittal of exactly what you’re doing. Because I don’t think we have anything we can rely on in terms of architectural drawings, site plans, uses,” said Commissioner Allyson Nemec, an architect.

The City Plan Commission’s decision does not require Common Council review because it involved a deviation from a council-created Development Incentive Zone (DIZ). The DIZ framework is designed to guide future development of a property by identifying everything from permitted landscaping standards to prohibited uses. The city created the Midtown Center DIZ to enable the early 2000s redevelopment of the Capitol Court mall into an outdoor shopping center.

Affordable Family Storage could reapply for a deviation.

In May, a new ownership group acquired much of the shopping center. Atlanta-based Laureate Capital paid $22.1 million for 26.2 acres of land and 241,283 square feet of space, much of which is currently leased. A Pick ‘n Save grocery store and Planet Fitness gym are the anchor tenants in the shopping center.

Bordered by W. Capitol Drive, W. Fond du Lac Avenue and N. 60th Street, the shopping center was listed for sale in January by New York-based DLC Management. DLC previously sold the Walmart property to AFS.

The city previously approved a zoning change for a portion of Midtown Center. In 2018, Phoenix Investors converted the vacant, 134,314-square-foot Lowe’s home improvement store, 5800 W. Hope Ave., into a distribution center. It is now leased to Sellars Absorbent Materials.

Photos and Renderings

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article referred to an earlier name for Randall’s law firm.