State Pursuing Much Smaller Building at 27th and Wisconsin

27th and Wisconsin development site. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The State of Wisconsin is advancing its plan for a new Milwaukee office building, though the scale of the proposed building is now much smaller than once planned.

A newly-released request for information (RFI) from the Department of Administration says the state wants to lease between 55,000 and 65,000 square feet of office space in a newly-constructed office building at N. 27th Street and W. Wisconsin Avenue.

That’s down from a more than 283,000-square-foot, $164 million structure the state was pursuing as recently as 2021.

The project is designed to replace the aging Milwaukee State Office Building, 819 N. 6th St., with a modern facility and avoid addressing deferred maintenance on the downtown building.

But Governor Tony Evers, who inherited the project from Scott Walker‘s administration, saw the Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature strip funding for the project in two consecutive capital budgets.

In 2023, the administration publicly pivoted to leasing the building instead of owning it outright, bypassing the need for budgeted capital funding.

The RFI calls for a five-year lease with two additional five-year options.

The developer would be required to purchase the 2.63-acre site at 2701 W. Wisconsin Ave. Near West Side Partners assembled the site, with the state later acquiring the property and demolishing the remaining buildings. Demolition was completed in November.

The RFI calls for 200 parking spaces for the state, down from 1,000 in the 2021 plan.

Agencies that would lease space in the building include the Office of the Governor, Department of Workforce Development, Department of Transportation, Department of Revenue, Department of Military Affairs, Capitol Police and Department of Administration Division of Hearings and Appeals.

The selected developer would be free to build a larger structure and lease space to other tenants. The RFI does not mention any prohibited co-tenants, including housing.

The project was pursued by Near West Side Partners as a catalytic project for one of the city’s busiest intersections.

But the reduced state office size, triggered in large part by a state policy shift to partially remote work, would shrink the building’s size to that of the neighboring, 64,000-square-foot, two-story building constructed in 2013 for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF).

The DCF building was constructed as a public-private partnership with the state leasing space from Klein Development.

Responses to the RFI are due July 1.

Any development on the site will require a zoning change. A general planned development designation currently governs the site’s usage and specifies the general layout of an office building and parking structure.

The state is expected to eventually sell the downtown office building. Walker, in 2018, said he expected a developer to demolish the property and redevelop the site, located across the street from the Baird Center. That same year the state estimated that moving the approximately 600 employees out of the downtown building would save $1.2 million annually.

The state paid $2 million to acquire the site on 27th St. and budgeted to spend an additional $2 million to clear the 17 remaining structures.

To the north, developer Rick Wiegand is redeveloping the former Wisconsin Avenue School into the Ambassador Suites, an extension of his Ambassador Hotel to the east. He has publicly said his project has been delayed because of delays in the state office project.

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