City Hiring GRAEF For Northridge Mall Replacement Design

Northridge Mall in August 2022. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Milwaukee-based GRAEF is being hired to design what comes next for the 58-acre, former Northridge Mall site.

Wednesday afternoon, the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee (RACM) board unanimously approved entering into a $125,000 contract with the firm.

“There is really just a shift from negativity to optimism,” said Department of City Development (DCD) planner Kyle Gast of the change in attitude since the city took ownership of the blighted property in January via tax foreclosure.

Viet & Co. was named the winning demolition bidder in June and will raze the mall, vacant since 2003, and prepare the site for whatever may come next.

“We are planning to generate quite a number of alternatives. We are leaving the door open to a number of uses,” said Gast.

GRAEF will work with DCD and the Granville Business Improvement District on the planning effort. A mix of online and in-person community meetings are planned, said Gast.

The city is electing to hire GRAEF by piggybacking on an existing master consulting services contract with the firm.

“We want to hit the ground running,” said the DCD planner. “We don’t want to be spending many, many months preparing and then not be able to execute when the right opportunity comes.”

The firm’s familiarity with the area is also viewed as an asset. GRAEF worked on the 2017 Granville Strategic Action Plan and Land Use Study for the surrounding area, but that plan envisioned reusing the existing mall structure. The latest plan will be able to approach design concepts with a blank canvas.

Most of the funding for the contract, which the DCD representative said isn’t finalized, would come from a $100,000 grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation awarded earlier this year. Gast told the RACM board that comments from GRAEF planners were included in the grant request. The city would access the WEDC grant by using $50,000 from a previous $400,000 RACM allocation to demolish the Boston Store.

GRAEF is expected to hire Baker Tilly to conduct market analysis and market interviews.

Once planning work begins, it is expected to take six to nine months to be completed.

Demolition and site preparation work is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2025. The cost is expected to be largely covered by a $15 million grant funded by the state’s allocation of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.

“Now that we control the site, we are really moving toward implementation so that once the mall is down, we are really in a position to take advantage of any proposals that come our way,” said Gast.

A community engagement website is available on the EngageMKE platform, while the city maintains a Granville Station webpage to track the broader project.

The RACM board unanimously approved the contract.

The city fought a nearly five-year public battle for control or demolition of the mall. A predecessor of China-based U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group purchased the property for $6 million in 2008, five years after the mall closed. But Black Spruce never advanced its plans for an Asian marketplace beyond conceptual drawings and fought the city’s attempts to see the structure razed until quietly walking away while owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in contempt fines.

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Property Map

Map of ownership of area around Northridge Mall. Image prepared by Department of City Development.

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