Eversana at 417 E. Chicago St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A global asset management firm is moving from its longtime home in suburban Menomonee Falls to Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward in a bid to grow the firm’s profile and attract and retain workers.

Allspring Global Investments will relocate in early 2025, with 300 employees in tow, to the 42,141-square-foot building at 417 E. Chicago St.

“Allspring may be a new name to some, but our global organization, with more than 20 offices in nine countries, has its roots in southeast Wisconsin,” said Jon Baranko, Allspring’s chief investment officer for fundamental investments, in a statement announcing the move.

The company can trace its roots back 50 years, to the formation of Strong Capital Management in 1974. Strong was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2004. Allspring, Wells Fargo’s asset management arm, was spun off in 2021 as an independent company. The company’s headquarters are in Charlotte. It reports more than $580 billion in assets under management.

“Allspring’s guiding principle is to elevate investing to be worth more, and that certainly applies to this initiative,” said Ann Miletti, the company’s chief diversity officer and head of active equity. “This move represents a long-term bet on one of America’s great cities and an investment in our ability to truly engage with our clients, partners and the community – as well as to continue to attract and retain top talent.”

A statement announcing the move touted the one-story office’s proximity to Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Public Market, The Hop streetcar system and Milwaukee Intermodal Station.

Allspring said it will outfit the building with “green building practices” and locally-made art.

The company will lease the property, which includes a surface parking lot south of the building. The complex fills a full city block bounded by E. Chicago, N. Jefferson, E. Menomonee and N. Milwaukee streets.

An affiliate of Hovde Properties paid $11 million for the full-block parcel in 2022. For lease signs appeared shortly thereafter.

Originally built in 1964, the building was renovated in 2014 into a home for The Dohmen Company. Dohmen also relocated to the Third Ward from Menomonee Falls, a move that marked a return to the neighborhood where the company was founded in 1858.

But Dohmen underwent dramatic change starting in 2018. Its life sciences division was sold to private equity firms Water Street Healthcare Partners and JLL Partners, who merged it with five other companies to form Eversana. The Chicago-based life sciences conglomerate has offices across the globe, but vacated the Third Ward office last year according to a Milwaukee area real estate report. Eversana, according to online job postings, continues to hire for jobs in Milwaukee.

The remaining Dohmen Company was converted to a company wholly owned by the Dohmen Company Foundation in 2019. According to Dohmen, it is the first company in the country to leverage the Philanthropic Enterprise Act of 2018 to dedicate all profits to a charitable foundation. The foundation sold the building to the Hovde affiliate.

Allspring’s current Menomonee Falls office, originally built for Strong in the late 1980s, will be sold. The building, previously reported at 136,000 square feet, once housed more than twice the employees that will be moving. Allspring currently operates in a hybrid work environment.

The company is one of several that have moved to Downtown or surrounding neighborhoods in recent years. Milwaukee Tool opened a new office to accommodate growth, Fiserv is moving its headquarters to the city from Brookfield, Veolia is moving its regional office from the west side to Downtown, SoftwareONE moved from Waukesha to the Third Ward, and Rite-Hite Holding Corporation relocated to the Reed Street Yards business park.

Photos

Downtown Parking Lot For Sale

522 N. 2nd St. and 191 W. Michigan St. Photo from CBRE Listing.

A large Westown parking lot has hit the market.

Brokerage firm CBRE is positioning the property as ideally suited for development given the growing amount of nearby investments and a new downtown plan that calls for thousands of more residents and jobs.

The 1.84-acre lot fills the west side of the parking lot bounded by W. Michigan Street, W. Clybourn St., N. Plankinton Ave. and N. 2nd St.

“The Westown neighborhood is experiencing a renaissance, with a myriad of new and exciting developments and enhancements to existing properties taking place within several blocks of the subject site,” says the listing.

The property, just north of Interstate 794, is already zoned to accomodate housing, hotel or office development.

It is owned by New York-based Neighborhood Property Group, which is focused on “acquiring, revitalizing, and reimagining strategic parking assets into thriving neighborhood hubs.” The company acquired the site in 2022 for $4.96 million. The site was previously owned by an affiliate of We Energies, but has cycled through a handful of investors in recent years.

The site is technically two parcels, 522 N. 2nd St. and 191 W. Michigan St.

Weekly Recap

Plan Would Improve Red Arrow Park, Overhaul Two Downtown Streets

The City of Milwaukee is looking to tap an overperforming tax incremental financing (TIF) district for $5.75 million to pay for upgrades to Red Arrow Park, redesign two downtown streets, start design work for a plaza around City Hall and cover a shortfall on the construction of Vel R. Phillips Plaza.

The plan also includes $11.75 million to bail out the Century City TIF district, which hasn’t generated enough incremental revenue to retire the debt associated with preparing the business park.

The design elements, which received their first public review Thursday, are conceptual ideas called for as part of the 2040 Downtown Plan. The board of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee (RACM) unanimously endorsed the proposal. The full Common Council must still review the plan.

Funding would come from the Park East TIF district, which was created in 2002 to support the demolition of the Park East Freeway spur and the construction of a new street network. The district, which must close by 2029 and cannot incur new expenses after 2024, is now generating several million dollars in annual incremental property tax revenue. Last year, the city tapped the district to cover the base cost for Vel R. Phillips Plaza and a multi-million investment in traffic calming infrastructure for the neighborhoods just northwest of Downtown.

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A Fight Over Historic Protection for Wisconsin Ave. Building

A W. Wisconsin Avenue apartment building built in 1925 was about to be granted temporary historic designation Wednesday on the basis of its role as an architecturally significant example of historic luxury apartments on the West Side and because of its connection to a prominent resident, architect Herbert Tullgren. Then an attorney was able to create enough procedural uncertainty that the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) backed off.

The underlying reason the commission was pursuing the designation was because Milwaukee’s largest private landlord, Youssef “Joe” Berrada, purchased the property and has a history of aggressively modifying properties to standardize many of their features. But it took quite some time for someone to suggest that, or even mention Berrada by name.

The designation, effectively a 180-day injunction, would prevent any exterior modification to the eight-story Millerand Apartments, 3035 W. Wisconsin Ave., while additional research can be completed and a hearing held on a permanent designation. But Berrada’s attorney Richard Donner, of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, argued the commission was violating its own ordinance and by-laws, creating a due process issue and violating Berrada’s property rights.

A fingers-crossed holding pattern now exists until a February hearing can be held on a permanent designation, with Donner promising Berrada won’t modify the exterior in the interim.

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Judge Displeased By City’s Northridge Curveball

Judge William Sosnay isn’t happy he’s learning about the city’s attempt to demolish the long-vacant Northridge Mall outside the walls of his court room.

The judge, who presides over the high-profile case, found out through the media that the city is pursuing a separate tax foreclosure case for more than $1 million in unpaid taxes. City officials publicly discussed the case last week before a Common Council committee.

“I don’t like reading in the paper events that are occurring in a case that is before my court when I haven’t been advised of it,” said Sosnay during a hearing Wednesday.

It left him quoting the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, he said (while dropping the word “hell”), asking “What the heck is going on out there?”

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