New North Avenue Apartment Building Moving Forward
Project wins environmental cleanup loan. Plus: Storage company acquires Milwaukee facility.
Bronzeville Creative Arts and Technology Hub. Rendering by Engberg Anderson Architects.
A mostly vacant site near W. North Avenue and Interstate 43 could soon become 60 apartments and an arts and technology incubator.
Construction is planned for a spring start on the Bronzeville Creative Arts and Technology Hub. First proposed in April 2022, Michael Adetoro‘s FIT Investment Group and a nonprofit partner would develop a 60-unit, mixed-income apartment building and entrepreneurial workspace on a 1.1-acre site at the northwest corner of N. 6th Street and W. North Avenue. Forty-eight of the apartments would be set aside at below-market rates for qualifying households.
The Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee (RACM) board unanimously endorsed a $700,000 environmental cleanup loan on Oct. 19 from its Brownfield Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund. The loan has a 3.5% interest rate and a 19-year repayment schedule. The site, according to an environmental assessment, previously housed several underground gasoline storage tanks and waste oil tanks. Portions of the property were previously used by a refrigerator repair shop, car wash, gasoline filling station, automobile service station, printing shop, furniture repair shop, locksmith, laundry facility, manufacturer and grocery store.
The RACM loan approval follows two earlier financial awards to advance what Redevelopment Authority documents describe as a $21 million development.
In May, the project secured competitively awarded low-income housing tax credits from the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. The credits, which will be sold to institutional investors to raise equity, form a critical piece of the project’s financing stack. In exchange for their receipt, developers must set aside specific units at rental rates targeted not to exceed 30% of a household’s income. The credit award was for $1.21 million per year for 10 years.
The project also received a $500,000 grant in late 2022 from the Common Council-controlled Housing Trust Fund as part of a record $10.7 million funding allocation.
Federal New Market Tax Credits would be used to finance the creative hub development, which includes a three-story building with approximately 22,000 square feet of space.
Engberg Anderson Architects is leading the design of the complex. The apartment building would be four stories tall based on 2022 renderings. A handful of the apartments would have a live-work floor plan with public-facing space.
The properties included in the development site are 2307-2309 N. 6th St., 2317-2325 N. 6th St., 616-618 W. North Ave., 622 W. North Ave., 626 W. North Ave., 628-630 W. North Ave., 2316-2318 N. 7th St. and 2322 N. 7th St. The parcels were acquired over a period of decades through property tax foreclosure, the most recent acquisition coming in 2015. The city issued a request for proposals in 2021 that drew three qualified responses. In May 2022, a driver crashed into the sole building, 628-630 W. North Ave., on the site and destroyed its facade. It was expected to be immediately demolished, but was stabilized and maintained as vacant.
The Bronzeville corridor is seeing a growing number of major development projects. The 50,000-square-foot Bronzeville Center for the Arts is proposed for a site three blocks to the east and a series of city-owned, foreclosed homes are being redeveloped into houses for artists in the blocks to the north. An office building and small gallery space for the Bronzeville Center for the Arts is under construction on a site just southeast of the creative hub site. Developer Melissa Allen is building new houses and renovating others on side streets in the area as part of her Bronzeville Estates project. To the southeast, the $105 million ThriveOn King project is nearing completion.
Renderings
Site Photos and 2013 Charette Conceptual Renderings
StorageMart Buys Milwaukee Self-Storage Facility
Self-storage provider StorageMart expanded its Wisconsin holdings in recent weeks with the acquisition of Store Space Self Storage facilities in Germantown, Menomonee Falls and on S. 28th Street in Milwaukee.
The company announced the acquisition on Oct. 11. State real estate transfer records posted the same day value the Milwaukee facility’s transfer at $6.9 million. The new city warehouse sits on a 69,478-square-foot property, 2701-2759 S. 28th St., just north of Aurora St. Luke’s Hospital. It was constructed in 1948 according to city assessment and lasted assessed for $4.8 million.
“Our expansion in the Milwaukee area marks a pivotal juncture in our mission to enhance accessibility and deliver unparalleled storage options. We are dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of excellence and innovation to meet the evolving demands of our valued customers,” said global director of acquisitions Alex Burnam in a statement. The Missouri-based company bills itself as the largest family-operated self-storage company.
It has additional Milwaukee facilities at 307 W. Layton Ave. and 802 E. Bay St., with several facilities in surrounding suburbs. According to assessment records, the two city of Milwaukee facilities were acquired in 2021 from Storage Master for a combined $23.6 million.
Weekly Recap
Ezekiel CDC Shows Off Foreclosed Home Rehabilitation
One of the 150 vacant, city-owned homes that are to be renovated under a federally-backed City of Milwaukee program was on display Friday.
U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and Department of City Development Commissioner Lafayette Crump were given a tour of Ezekiel Community Development Corp.‘s progress in renovating the home at 903 N. 37th St. The work was described as stripping the house to its “bones” to create a new home within the historic structure.
Ezekiel vice president Jim Gaillard led the tour, highlighting how the 1,234-square-foot home was being renovated for a future owner-occupant and how, at the same time, Ezekiel was training a cohort of future electricians, carpenters and other trades workers.
“I use this as the classroom,” said Gaillard, a master electrician. “Not only do you get housing, you get family-sustaining jobs out of this. It’s a beautiful addition for the neighborhood.”
Urban Spaceship Conference Celebrates ‘Streets of New Milwaukee’
Urban Spaceship will land in Milwaukee for the fourth time on Nov. 14.
The one-day urbanism conference, organized by NEWaukee, will focus on the “Streets of NEW Milwaukee” in 2023.
Confirmed speakers include Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Urbanism Speakeasy podcast host and publisher Andy Boenau, Urbanist Ventures founder Laura Fingal-Surma, City of Chattanooga marketing director Brian Smith and developers Joshua Jeffers and Kevin Newell.
The conference will be held at Wheel & Sprocket’s large Bay View store, 187 E. Becher St.
Nursery Rhyme Fireplace in a “Kindergarten Suite”
Nursery rhymes were used as decorative motifs in Milwaukee’s school buildings long ago in the early twentieth century.
The architects Van Ryn & DeGelleke followed the popular trend of designing tile installations with images of these amusing stories in kindergarten classrooms, such as schools featured in previous Tile Town articles, including Keefe, MPS Success Center, Hartford, and Riley Montessori. While all those school buildings continue to serve students, another one of their designs built in 1919, Wisconsin Avenue School, has a different future.
The kindergarten room at the former school, 2708 W. Wisconsin Ave., features two square-shaped tiled panels on a brick fireplace mantel. The diptych flanks the fire chamber and features the Little Frog and the Pretty Mouse from A Frog He Would A Wooing Go. Hartford University Avenue School, built two years earlier, also features tiles depicting the nursery rhyme but shows the scene of the Little Frog in the beginning on his way out to meet the Pretty Mouse and at the moment before the end when the white duck gobbles him up.
This scene at Wisconsin Avenue School shows when the Little Frog flatters the Pretty Mouse so he can marry her. Like the tiles at Riley Montessori, the tile images are based on Walter Crane’s illustrations in The Baby’s Opera: A Book of Old Rhymes with New Dresses (1877).
Crowley Signs Off On Greendale Barn Restoration
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley signed off on a deal Monday that will lead to the redevelopment of a historic barn in Greendale.
For the past 10 years, the historic Stelzer Barn and Dairy House have sat vacant. The property sits near the intersection of W. Loomis Road and S. Root River Parkway and was acquired by the county roughly a century ago during the construction of the Root River Parkway.
A local entrepreneur, Virginia Emmons, has worked out a deal with the county to rehabilitate and lease the historic buildings. Emmons and her husband plan to use the property for commercial activities, including events and short-term rentals, and, potentially, a bicycle shop, given the proximity to the Oak Leaf Trail. However, future uses will need to be approved by the county and secure zoning approval from the Village of Greendale.
Prior to the deal, Milwaukee County Parks had identified the dilapidated buildings for demolition. Now, Emmons, doing business as Two Weathervanes LLC, will make at least $750,000 worth of repairs to the buildings. Under the deal with the county, once the business has recouped its investment, it will pay 15% of its annual revenue as a lease, with half of that set aside for maintenance. Public access to the grounds surrounding the buildings will also be maintained for at least eight hours a day.
Tentative Deal Would Salvage Milwaukee’s Deconstruction Program
After a dizzying amount of false starts, the City of Milwaukee’s deconstruction program could finally get moving.
A deal with Northcott Neighborhood House to deconstruct 15 houses in a targeted area and build replacements would be seeded with the remaining $711,000 from a 2019 allocation.
But getting to even a tentative agreement has taken hours of committee meetings, failed contractors and plenty of finger-pointing.
First proposed in 2018, the initial deconstruction plan called for the city to prime the marketplace by deconstructing its own homes piece by piece, instead of demolishing them. Private owners razing their properties would also be required to deconstruct homes built before 1930. The vision called for more jobs to be created versus mechanical demolition while also swapping the cost of landfill tipping with a new revenue stream from selling salvaged lumber and other materials.
Immigration Office Moving To 310W Building
The Milwaukee office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency will relocate from its longtime home at the north end of Downtown to the big blue 310W building on W. Wisconsin Avenue.
The move comes as the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) prepares to redevelop the agency’s current home, a three-story building at 310 E. Knapp St., into the first dedicated building for its civil engineering, architectural engineering and construction management programs.
USCIS, a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is moving to the eighth floor of the building previously known as The Blue and Reuss Federal Plaza. According to a building permit, USCIS will occupy approximately 20,000 square feet of space.
The agency, created in 2003, performs many key immigration functions, including processing applications for naturalization or asylum, overseeing green card and visa petitions and managing immigrant benefits.
Council Might Hold Up Mayor’s Changes To Zoning Board
A citizen-led committee responsible for deciding issues like whether or not a fence may exceed the maximum allowed height, a child care center should be allowed in a residential neighborhood or a drug treatment clinic on a commercial street has itself become a political football at City Hall.
The Common Council might hold up appointments to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BOZA) in part because of Mayor Cavalier Johnson‘s proposal to place the citizen-staffed board under the control of Department of Administration director Preston Cole, but also because many council members want to see their own input weighed more heavily by board members.
“I have been against that,” said Council President José G. Pérez of the reorganization at Tuesday’s Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee meeting. “I think there is a lot to figure out with that.”
Pérez suggested the committee could hold the four pending appointments to the five-member board while the budget process plays out in the coming weeks. Included in the mayor’s proposal is the reassignment of BOZA to the Department of Administration, and the council president said having certainty on if that will happen could guide things going forward. “It’s not denying the reappointments,” said Pérez.
MSOE Conservatory Opens in Historic Duplex
Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) held a dedication and ribbon-cutting for the new Patricia Kern Conservatory of Music.
The new conservatory is housed in a redeveloped former duplex at 308-312 E. Juneau Ave. that is more than 100 years old. The 4,400-square-foot building includes three floors of practice rooms, recording studios, and offices for the university’s growing music program.
The conservatory is the first for MSOE’s relatively new music program. The building was acquired by the university in 2021 for $600,300 from longtime owners Lynn and Betty Adelman.
The music program at MSOE was created within the past decade said Alexa Deacon, director of Campus Life, and now includes a concert band, jazz ensemble, string orchestra, concert choir, pep band and jazz combo. While the university does not offer any degrees in music, students can receive credit for their participation in the ensembles. “Thankfully, today, we now have a space that’s dedicated to our music programs, ” Deacon said.
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