Moxy Hotel Passed by Divided Committee, Sets Up Council Showdown

The Moxy Milwaukee Deer District hotel. Rendering by Gary Brink & Associates.

A proposed seven-story, 156-room Moxy Hotel for a site near Fiserv Forum picked up a key endorsement Wednesday from a divided Common Council committee.

The hours-long meeting sets up a pivotal vote next Tuesday before the full Common Council.

The core issue at hand is a failed union election for The Trade, NCG Hospitality‘s other Deer District hotel, and the still pending National Labor Relations Board investigation. Opponents allege NCG Hospitality engaged in illegal practices. But parties on both sides of the issue did everything they could not to talk about it at the meeting, and instead justify the Moxy Hotel’s approval or denial based on other factors.

“There is no basis under the law to connect that with the land use process before you,” said attorney Brian Randall, representing NCG, to the committee. Prior to the vote, the committee and several other city officials spent almost two hours in closed session debating the issue.

A May 6 committee hearing had already ended with the issue being held over when Milwaukee Bucks attorney Bruce Block accused the city of acting in bad faith for resisting the project after it encouraged the Bucks to come forward with the hotel during the contentious debate around the FPC Live concert venue.

NCG and the Bucks need a zoning change to enable the hotel’s development on a portion of the former Bradley Center site, 430 W. State St., but a previously-approved general planned development designation for the area established that a hotel between four and 20 stories in height was appropriate.

Construction unions have lined up in support of the proposal, while the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization union opposes it. Both groups had members in attendance who testified Wednesday.

Area alderman and committee chair Robert Bauman is the leading council opponent of the proposal.

“I think this development site on the corner of Vel Philips and State is one of the most prominent development sites in Milwaukee, possibly the second most,” said Bauman. He said a hotel was appropriate for the site, but the limited service Moxy Hotel was not what was envisioned. “The details are something I cannot agree with.”

“We’re told we can’t talk about ‘highest and best use,’ so we won’t talk about highest and best use,” said the alderman. He said he was moving to reject the zoning change because it lacked a rooftop bar, relied on a first-floor bar for check-in instead of a conventional desk and had small rooms. “A logical assumption is that at this location you would have a rooftop bar… that’s a detail, a new detail.”

“This particular detailed plan that’s being proposed is not consistent with the health, safety and welfare of the public,” he said. “I think the general welfare is generally promoted by approving projects that have the maximum benefit to the community.”

The general theme matched the testimony of MASH leader Peter Rickman and Michael Rosen, a retired Milwaukee Area Technical College professor and labor leader. Rosen said the hotel was designed as limited service and without a rooftop bar to avoid competing with The Trade. “It may be in their interest not to establish a competitor, but it’s not in the interests of the city or its taxpayers,” he said.

But the arguments failed to persuade Bauman’s council colleagues.

His motion to reject the zoning change failed on a 1-3-1 vote, with committee members Peter Burgelis, DiAndre Jackson and Scott Spiker voting in opposition. Alderwoman Milele A. Coggs abstained, but asked several critical questions of the development team.

Jackson then motioned to recommend approval of the zoning change, which passed on a 3-1-1 vote, with Coggs remaining in abstention and Bauman voting no.

Randall said that his client hopes to break ground by July 2026 and does not yet have financing in place. The attorney, the only member of the development team to address the committee Wednesday, said the project would cost more than $50 million to develop. The company’s yet-to-be-selected general contractor would be required to make a good faith effort to meet the city’s Residents Preference Program and Small Business Enterprise hiring and contracting targets. The requirements are imposed on developments receiving direct subsidies of $1 million or more. The Moxy Hotel would not be directly subsidized, but is proposed for land owned by the Bucks and given to the team through the 2015 subsidy agreement.

NCG is owned by the Lenz family. A Working Family’s Party letter, included in the council file, takes issue with founder David Lenz and his “mega-donor” status to Republicans.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson and the Department of City Development (DCD) have strongly backed the proposal, going as far as issuing a rebuttal letter to a report prepared by the city’s Legislative Reference Bureau that suggested the council could reject the deal based on “highest and best use” standards.

“Very, very pleased that this moved forward, very pleased that there wasn’t acrimony today,” said DCD Commissioner Lafayette Crump to Urban Milwaukee. “I think there became an adversarial nature, potentially the committee versus the development team and, of course, the competing union perspectives, but on the whole this is an amazing opportunity to continue building out a really important part of the city. I’m excited that we took a really important step forward today.”

For more on the hotel’s design, see our coverage of the February City Plan Commission hearing. For more on The Trade union fight, see our coverage from early May.

Renderings

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