Depending on which news sources you follow, Milwaukee is going through either a “renaissance” or a “reinvention.” Or maybe it’s a “reboot” or a “reimagining,” like that crappy Tim Burton version of Planet Of The Apes. However you want to define it, it’s safe to say that Milwaukee is currently building a lot of new shit.
• Have you ever taken a ride on a wooden roller coaster and thought to yourself, “Gee, I wish I could live in a high-rise apartment building made of wood?” Of course you haven’t, but Milwaukee’s New Land Enterprises wants to build a high-rise apartment building made of wood anyway. It would be a lot like the American Eagle at Six Flags, except not.
Here’s the scoop: New Land wants to build a 21-story, 410,000-square-foot, 201-unit mass timber luxury apartment building on a long-vacant site at the northeast corner of N. Van Buren St. and E. Kilbourn Ave. It would have a pool on the sixth floor. It would have a “wellness floor.” Oh, and if completed, the 238-foot-tall building would be the “tallest timber structure in the Western Hemisphere.” Holy crap.
“Mass timber is an amazing building tool,” says New Land’s Tim Gokhman. “Its carbon sequestration and renewability properties are coupled with the stunning aesthetics of natural wood beams. It’s a true marriage of form and function.”
Gokhman hopes to break ground on the so-called “Ascent” in 2019. Also: there are only a few weeks left to check out Fright Fest at Six Flags. [Urban Milwaukee]
• A five-story, 118,00-square-foot industrial building in Walker’s Point will be converted into 116 “upscale” apartments. The 100-year-old building, located at 214 E. Florida St., was recently sold to a Minneapolis-based developer for a cool $3.8 million. Construction work on the so-called “Maxwell” is expected to begin within a month. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
• Speaking of old Walker’s Point buildings scheduled to get the “converted into apartments” treatment, a long-in-the-works project to convert a three-story, once-condemned warehouse located at 425 W. National Ave. is finally moving forward. When finished, the building will feature 12 apartments and 5,000 square feet of ground floor retail. [BizTimes]
• An opening ceremony was held for two newly redeveloped buildings in Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood. The Welford Sanders Historic Lofts and Enterprise Center and the nearby Fifth Street School Apartments boast a combined total of 107 new apartments—95 percent of which are “offered at reduced rates based on income.” [Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service]
• A new 30-unit apartment building just north of Brady Street is set to open in January 2019. [Milwaukee Business Journal]
• Voces de la Frontera Inc. put in an offer to buy the former Forest Home Library for a cool $450,000. The Milwaukee civil rights organization wants to spend $100,000 sprucing the joint up, and eventually move its operations there. [Milwaukee Business Journal]
• Plans are still in motion—if a bit delayed and modified—to turn the shuttered 37th Street Elementary School into 49 affordable, senior apartments. [Urban Milwaukee]