City, Bucks, Plan Commission Happy With Deer District Apartments Design
The design for 'a complex site with some complex constraints' wins approval.
Block 5 Apartments. Rendering by Eppstein Uhen Architects.
Department of City Development and Milwaukee Bucks officials believe a proposed apartment building for a vacant lot northeast of Fiserv Forum represents substantial progress in delivering on the vitality promised by the 2015 arena development agreement.
“We are really pleased with the result that is coming forward,” said DCD planning manager Sam Leichtling to the City Plan Commission on Monday afternoon. Leichtling and his colleagues thanked developer J. Jeffers & Co. for working with the city to refine the design after it was first introduced in 2023.
“This is a complex site with some complex constraints,” said Leichtling.
Jeffers intends to develop a nearly full-block building that includes 269 market-rate apartments, a 28,000-square-foot fieldhouse for Milwaukee Area Technical College, 13,000 square feet of retail space along W. Juneau Avenue, a new plaza at N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and W. McKinley Avenue and a rooftop deck for tenants. It would be built on the 2.19-acre block bounded by W. McKinley Avenue, W. Juneau Ave., N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and N. Vel R. Phillips Avenue. It would fill a block between the Aloft Hotel and The Trade Hotel.
“As much as it was a blank slate, it had three primary design challenges,” said project architect Scott Kindness of Eppstein Uhen Architects. Chief among them was the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District sewer infrastructure at the northeast corner of the site. The plaza, not a parking ramp as initially proposed, will be created on that space to preserve access to the underground lines. Additionally, Jeffers and EUA needed to incorporate the fieldhouse into the base of the building and hide the parking structure within the building.
To address the challenges, the fieldhouse projects out from the north side of the building, avoiding the engineering issue of stacking floors above a gymnasium that includes two full-sized NBA basketball courts. The parking structure would be placed in the middle of the block, wrapped by the structure and only accessible via N. Vel R. Phillips Avenue.
The 18,000-square-foot plaza is intended as a public amenity. “We just think this is going to be a really delightful pedestrian-friendly pause in the urban landscape,” said Kindness. The depth is intended to mitigate the road noise and a landscaping plan is intended to make it an attractive place. “This will stay green and look pretty,” Kindness noted. A Jeffers team member said it could also possibly be used for ice skating, though no firm plans have been made.
Kindness said he believes the resulting building is a “kind of transitional building” that varies between seven stories in height at the south end to five stories at the north end. He said it would help link the Deer District entertainment area and the still industrial Haymarket neighborhood to the north.
“Certainly, this is a beautiful building and transformational development,” said plan commission chair Stephanie Bloomingdale. “It really combines that brawn and elegance together with having that public space, which is something we’re always asking for.”
“For us, this is just continued commitment to the area,” said Jeffers chief development officer Brian Loftin. A few blocks to the south, Jeffers redeveloped the former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel complex into a mix of affordable housing for students, Westlawn Green, and a market-rate housing complex, Journal Commons. Westlawn Green also opened the relationship with MATC, leading to the development of the latest project.
The MATC component would include a gymnasium with retractable seating for 1,000 spectators. An NBA-sized court would be available for games, while two practice courts would bisect it for non-game usage. A fitness center component is also planned. MATC’s basketball and volleyball teams currently play their home games at Alverno College. The technical college said it currently has nine sports teams with 135 participating students, but hopes to grow that to 17 teams with 400 participating students. Building residents would be able to use the fitness center components during select windows. NBA teams are expected to use the fieldhouse for shoot arounds when the arena is unavailable.
Parking in the building would only be for building residents and staff. MATC students and staff would be directed to use the Bucks’ 5th Street Parking Structure.
For more on the building’s design, see our Jan. 16 coverage when the land sale was reviewed by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee (RACM). Milwaukee County owns much of the site as it was once under the Park East Freeway, but RACM owns the portion that the Sydney HiH complex once sat on before its 2012 demolition. The 2015 agreement calls the site to be conveyed for $1. The site, most recently, has been used for construction staging and temporary parking. The building’s placeholder project name is Block 5 Apartments, a reference to the number of the block in the arena development agreement.
After asking several questions about parking, design and context, the City Plan Commission unanimously endorsed the zoning change.
A zoning change to enable the proposal will next go before the Common Council. Jeffers hopes to break ground this year. The firm is also pursuing a project to partially redevelop the Clark Building on W. Wisconsin Avenue into housing.
Renderings
RACM Renderings and Site Plan
2023 Renderings
Site Photos and Early Conceptual Renderings
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