Northwestern Mutual Will Buy University Club
The Georgian Revival building was home to downtown club for 125 years.
University Club of Milwaukee, 924 E. Wells St. Michael Barera, (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
An affiliate of Northwestern Mutual has an agreement in place to buy the downtown University Club.
The University Club board announced in December it was closing the downtown club, at 924 E. Wells St.
The affiliate Wells Street LLC will buy the building, provided the city approves a rezoning of the property and the board approves the sale, said Jim Caragher, University Club Board president in a letter to members Monday morning.
“We believe this transaction is in the best interest of the Club, and are encouraged with the prospects of having the iconic building locally owned and stewarded by Northwestern Mutual,” Caragher said.
The deal should be closed by July, Caragher said, after a board meeting in April and after the city’s zoning process plays out.
The University Club has been at the six-story building on E. Wells Street since the 192o’s. The roughly 58,000-square-foot building comes with a large ballroom, space for business meetings, hotel rooms, a restaurant on the first floor, a dining room on the fifth and a lounge on the sixth.
The club was closed in 2023 for a lack of business. Memberships and restaurant patronage were declining and maintenance costs were mounting. Its 2016 merger with the former Tripoli Club, 7401 N. 43rd St., didn’t quite take, with the downtown location afterwards called the “city club” and the location on 43rd St. called its “country club.” The country club, helped by golf memberships, will continue to operate.
“Taking all these circumstances into consideration, the Board believes that the best course of action is to exit the Club business downtown and focus on preserving the Country Club experience,” Caragher said when the downtown club was closed. “The Country Club is largely experiencing member engagement at a greater level, and we are poised to continue the positive changes that make our golf, aquatic, and racquet sports programs attractive to a broad audience of current and potential members, and well-positioned for the needs of both individuals and families.”
The University Club is a historic Milwaukee institution and it has long been the meeting place for the Greater Milwaukee Committee. It was founded in 1898 by a group of college graduates. The building that had long been its home was designed by architect John Russell Pope in the style of Georgian Revival.
Update: This story has been updated to correct an error, which stated the club was originally founded as The Milwaukee Club.
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