It’s Not a Data Center, Developer Says of Midtown Walmart Project

Midtown Center Walmart. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

As community meetings get underway about the proposed redevelopment of the long-vacant Midtown Center Walmart, one of the project’s co-owners is pushing back on the notion that the computing component is anything like the large data centers that are drawing opposition elsewhere in the state.

“You’ll never know that we would exist in the back of this building,” said Trent Overhue, co-owner of Affordable Family Storage, in an interview in advance of the first open house meeting.

Overhue’s firm has sought since 2022 to redevelop the former Walmart at 5825 W. Hope Ave. But after being initially rejected, it has crafted a plan that has a more likely chance of gaining the support of Ald. Mark Chambers, Jr. A relocated Capitol Library and city-controlled community center would be located in the front, self-storage and a computing facility placed in the back of the store and 200 affordable apartments built atop the parking lot.

But an initial zoning review for May was canceled due to concern about the computing component.

The rear 19,000 square feet of the 158,000-square-foot building is proposed to house what Overhue calls a “computational research” facility — a term he uses to distinguish it from the hyperscale data centers that have drawn scrutiny over water use, noise and energy consumption.

What It Is — and Isn’t

Overhue is deliberate about the distinction. “There’s a lot of different uses,” he said. “You have data storage, cloud storage — this is solely utilized for research.”

The facility would serve tenants running specialized computing workloads. Overhue said the first tenant would be in the medical research field, though he declined to name them.

“All you’re doing is solving complicated equations,” he said.

In practical terms, the facility would operate at an IT electrical load of roughly seven megawatts, with a cooling load of about two megawatts, for a total draw of nine to ten megawatts. AFS plans to expand the building’s electrical service from approximately three megawatts to seven to support that capacity. We Energies has the available power, he said.

For context, Overhue noted that hyperscale data center campuses — like the Microsoft facility under construction in Mount Pleasant — operate at thousands of megawatts and can exceed a million square feet. The Midtown facility’s IT room would occupy less than 10,000 square feet.

Closed-Loop Cooling, No Noise

One of the concerns raised about large data centers is heavy water consumption. Overhue said the facility would use closed-loop cooling systems, similar in concept to a car’s radiator, in which the same conditioned water circulates continuously without significant replenishment.

“That water stays in there forever,” he said. “It virtually uses no water.”

He also pointed out that the same type of condensers used in the facility are already in use at the neighboring Pick ‘N Save grocery store. As for noise, he said the operation would be “not noisy” and “as clean as it comes.” The city’s noise ordinance would restrict the noise from being audible across 60th Street.

The facility’s cooling equipment was recently repositioned to the rear of the building. It was a recommendation from the city, said Overhue, made to further minimize any noise impact on neighbors.

AFS as Operator

Overhue clarified that AFS is not simply leasing space to a third-party data center operator. The company handles the infrastructure side, including air handlers, UPS systems, and cooling distribution units, and brings in tenants to operate their own equipment within that environment.

“We are the operators of the equipment,” he said. “We work with tenants on the equipment side.”

He acknowledged that AFS has done similar retrofits at other facilities but declined to identify them, citing confidentiality agreements with tenants. “A lot of our tenants are under pretty strict NDAs” — nondisclosure agreements — he said.

Overhue said several traditional data centers already exist in Milwaukee. Potawatomi, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and several other institutions operate small facilities within larger buildings.

Part of a Bigger Vision for Midtown

Overhue framed the computing facility as just one piece of a broader effort to reinvigorate the Midtown neighborhood. The full redevelopment plan calls for a replacement Capitol Library branch, a community space in the former garden center, 89,000 square feet of self-storage and 200 units of affordable housing on the parking lot — the latter being developed by Gorman & Company.

“The foot traffic — in the commercial world, if you have households and foot traffic, that starts to attract better tenant quality,” Overhue said. “With that, we’ll help kind of bring in new life and new tenants into Midtown.”

He said AFS has also been working with Gorman and Chambers on concepts for the parking lot that he believes could further accelerate the area’s recovery.

“Some of the stuff that we’re working with the city on has the potential to really put Midtown… back in the right direction,” he said.

Community Meetings Continue

Three open-house-style community meetings are being held at the former Walmart to give residents the opportunity to ask questions about the project. Representatives from AFS, the Department of City Development, Milwaukee Public Library and Gorman & Company are expected at each session.

• Wednesday, June 18 — 5:30 to 7 p.m.
• Saturday, June 27 — 12 to 1:30 p.m.

AFS acquired the former Walmart in 2022. A previous attempt to rezone the building, centered on self-storage, was denied in 2023.

“‘Data centers’ are a couple of very bad words these days,” said Chambers in a May press release. “They conjure images of gray buildings covering thousands of acres, creating nuisance levels of noise and taxing local water supplies and other resources. The development proposed for the Midtown Center includes nothing even close.”

Former Walmart

New Walmart interior layout. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Computational research place sign. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Initial Walmart site plan. Image submitted to CPC by KORB.

Update: Chambers stance has been clarified

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