Supervisors Back Grant for Abandoned Building Redevelopment

2627-2631 W. State St. Rendering by Quorum Architects.

Milwaukee County supervisors provided the first approval needed to help solicit state grant funding for an affordable housing project on W. State Street in the City of Milwaukee.

Watersview Investment Group, led by Jason Waters, is working on redeveloping a vacant, dilapidated building at 2627-2631 W. State St. into a mixed-use building with six apartments above a first-floor commercial space.

Supervisors on the board’s Committee on Community, Environment and Economic Development considered whether or not the county should sponsor the project in an application for the Community Development Investment Program (CDIG) run by the state’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Watersview is after a $250,000 CDIG grant for the $1.1 million redevelopment.

“We’ve applied for this a couple times in the past to help support other similar projects,” said Heather Reidl, contracts manager for the county’s Economic Development Division. “It’s meant for urban projects, especially ones that involve the redevelopment of a currently unused vacant or underutilized property. In this case, it is a mixed-use development property that had been abandoned for 20 years and is out of repair and in no way useful right now.”

By approving the CDIG grant, the county is “helping to facilitate what’s already a challenging project,” said Aaron Hertzberg, director of the Department of Administration Services.

Waters purchased the 120-year-old building in 2020 for $45,000 after graduating from the Associates in Commercial Real Estate (ACRE) program. The 10,064-square-foot building is currently structured for eight apartments, but Waters plans to redevelop the interior for six larger apartments.

Larger apartments are needed in the affordable housing market, Reidl said. The plan for the building includes four three-bedroom units, each approximately 1,100 square feet, and two 1,000 square-foot, two-bedroom apartments.

The rent charged for these apartments will not meet the federal government’s definition of affordable housing rates for the area. But the developer plans to keep rental rates “close” to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development‘s rates for the area.

“This would allow renters the relief knowing they have sound and a fully rehabilitated residential building to live in close to affordable rates,” the developer wrote in a project proposal.

But the majority of the building will be available for tenants making less than the median area income. The Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) awarded the project four vouchers in 2022 to subsidize rents for future tenants. The federal vouchers cover up to 70% of a tenant’s rent.

Renovations are already underway on the project, which is expected to be finished by 2024.

The county board committee unanimously approved sponsoring the project’s application for a CDIG grant. The final approval will go before the full board later this month.