Construction Starts On 27th Street Garden Apartments
"Condo-like" complex with 24 units will add upscale housing to undeveloped southside site.
4450 S. 27th St. from the west. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Construction is underway on a new apartment complex in a highly-visible, but, until now, hard-to-access site on Milwaukee’s South Side.
Developer Nabil Salous is constructing a pair of two-story buildings with 12 “upscale” units each. A third, 12-unit building is planned as a second phase.
The 6.4-acre property, formally 4450 S. 27th St., is visible from Interstate 43/894 to the south, but accessing the development will occur via what is currently a dead-end segment of S. 26th Street branched off of W. Whitaker Avenue. A private street extension with a sidewalk will be added.
The buildings are being placed on the southern portion of the lot. A six-foot-tall fence will separate the buildings from the two hotels to the west and the single-family homes to the south.
A zoning change for the project was approved in early November.
Salous initially proposed a larger project for the site in 2017, with 60 units spread across two units. But after a zoning change was approved, the project never advanced.
“We made the units too big and we had some difficulty with the financing to get the project to cash flow,” said Salous to the City Plan Commission on Oct. 16.
Stephen Perry Smith Architects designed both versions of the proposal.
The raSmith engineering company created a landscape plan for the site, with a focus on dividing the site from the single-family homes to the north. Salous said high-efficiency windows will minimize sound impacts from the freeway.
“There was some angst about having anything there at all,” said area Alderman Scott Spiker about the neighborhood feedback. But he said the revised plan would reduce the density and impact. “People were generally understanding that something is going to go in here. This is a nice plan.”
Salous said the quality of the units would match that of those recently constructed in Brookfield and Waukesha. Each unit would include its own exterior door, garage, surface parking space and fully-separated utilites.
The floor plans (including the second phase of development) will contain a mix of one (6), two (18) and three-bedroom (12) layouts.
“We did a similar project close by and were very successful,” said Salous to the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee on Oct. 24.
Salous, a Palestinian immigrant who leads Salous Construction Management and is a prominent member of Milwaukee’s Muslim community, led the development of the Layton Lofts complex in 2022. The 14-unit development is located behind a commercial building he developed at 800 W. Layton Ave.
Similar to his latest proposal, the site is largely hidden.
The eastern border of the 27th Street site is formed by Villa Mann Creek, which was naturalized a little over a decade ago as part of the nearby freeway reconstruction.
The western border of the site is formed by the Rodeway Inn & Suites Milwaukee Airport hotel, 4400 S. 27th St., and the Quality Suites Milwaukee Airport hotel, 4488 S. 27th St.
Photos
Site
Layton Lofts
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Related Legislation: File 230627
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