Demolition Permit Filed For Brady Street Hotel

Brady Street Hotel proposal. Rendering by Kahler Slater.

A hotel proposed for Brady Street is inching closer to a groundbreaking.

A demolition permit has been filed for the two-story retail building on the site, 1709-1723 N. Farwell Ave. According to Department of Neighborhood Services records, it is anticipated to be issued to contractor HM Brandt on Sept. 18.

The 130-room, 11-story hotel that is slated to replace it would be flagged as a Hilton Tapestry hotel, according to an April press release from the International Luxury Hotel Association and BLVD Hospitality’s website, which lists the hotel as a “lifestyle hotel” in development.

Klein Development, led by Michael Klein, and Jeno Cataldo, a frequent Klein collaborator and Brady Street business owner, secured zoning approval for the development in April 2023.

Klein, via text message, told Urban Milwaukee there is not yet a definitive date to start construction on the hotel.

The glassy, triangular hotel would be developed on an 18,179-square-foot lot at the intersection of E. Brady Street, N. Cambridge Avenue and N. Farwell Avenue. It would be the only hotel located between Downtown to the south and suburban Glendale to the north.

The Common Council approved a zoning change to enable the project in April 2023.

Parking for the hotel would be constructed across the street on a currently-vacant lot at 1744-1750 N. Farwell Ave. The zoning change requires the development team to provide 59 off-site spaces and 11 short-term, on-site spaces.

In April 2023, a representative of the project team said four options under consideration include an apartment complex atop a parking deck, a large first-floor commercial space hiding a parking structure above, a two-story parking structure and a temporary surface lot for 90 cars on the 22,600-square-foot lot.

The parking property was previously acquired by senior living provider Saint John’s on the Lake, whose campus is a block east. The organization demolished a three-story office building that filled part of the site.

No building permits have been filed for the hotel, nor the parking development. Kahler Slater is leading the hotel’s design.

But a project investor seems to have publicly entered the picture. In October, a limited liability company (LLC) affiliated with Mark Sellers‘ Alligator Holdings purchased the hotel site for $2 million from a Klein/Cataldo LLC and the parking site for $2.9 million from Saint John’s.

Sellers sold his plastic molding company, MGS Mfg. Group, in 2016 and launched the holding company the following year. Last year, he sold the Germantown property leased to MGS for $32.7 million. Sellers did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The 12,000-square-foot building slated to be demolished was constructed in 1987. It was long known for the Kinko’s/FedEx Office store on its first floor. The last remaining tenant, Mega Media Xchange, closed in 2023.

A three-story, triangular building previously occupied the site. Frank Crivello demolished the structure in the 1980s as part of a shopping center development that also included developing the strip mall, 1414-1438 E. Brady St., now anchored by Walgreens.

Klein’s brother Joe Klein, through HKS Holdings, is working with Kahler Slater on a Tempo by Hilton hotel in Westown. That hotel is now to be a floor shorter, according to a recent filing with the Historic Preservation Commission.

The Klein family is also pursuing an office-to-residential conversion of the 35-story 100 East office tower, but their prospective financing plan of using state and federal historic preservation tax credits was recently dealt a setback when the Historic Preservation Review Board denied recognizing the building as historic.

Renderings

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