Old Library To Become Appliance Store

Mill Road Library in 2019. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

More than four years after it closed, the City of Milwaukee has found a buyer for the Mill Road Library.

Fatimah Ayesh intends to purchase the property, 6431 N. 76th St., and open a liquidated appliance store in the circular, 15,061-square-foot building. It would be her family’s second store. They also own Racine Liquidators, located on Lathrop Avenue in Racine.

The appliance liquidation business model involves selling items, often at a discount, discontinued by manufacturers or sold to a liquidator by a business closing or looking to clear inventory.

The final vote to sell the former library could occur later this month, 10 years after the Milwaukee Public Library board first voted to replace the aging facility.

A new mixed-use facility, the Good Hope Library, opened in 2020, but only after delays induced because of financing, construction and, ultimately, pandemic challenges. In 2021, the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD) repositioned the former library into a COVID-19 vaccination clinic, which lasted into 2022.

In 2023, a request for proposals (RFP) to sell the property drew no bids. The RFP relied on a third-party appraisal, from 2021, that valued the property at $410,000 and asked for a $500,000 bid. Now, the city is poised to sell the property for only $135,000.

“We have had many people go through it, but once they look at the functional obsolescence and the cost to renovate it, it’s been difficult to sell,” said Department of City Development real estate specialist Rhonda Szallai to the City Plan Commission Monday. Renovation challenges, said Szallai, include plumbing infrastructure only being available in a small portion of the building.

Ayesh’s renovations, according to a DCD report, are expected to cost $210,950.

The plan commission unanimously endorsed declaring the property surplus, sending the sale to the Common Council for final approval. The structure was built in 1970.

The rectangular, 37,155-square-foot property is connected to the city’s neighboring Northwest Health Center, 7630 W. Mill Rd. The library property includes 27 parking spaces.

There is one aspect of the building that has changed since the 2023 RFP: the lawn art. A Corten-steel sculpture, taller than the building itself, was relocated to a site outside the Good Hope Library.

Ayesh, according to the DCD sale report and city assessment records, also owns the three-story office building at 131 W. Layton Ave.

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