Depending on which news sources you follow, Milwaukee is going through either a “renaissance” or a “reinvention.” However you want to define it, it’s safe to say that Milwaukee is currently building a lot of new and wonderful things! Here are some of them, brought to you by GTG Home Buyers!
• Nothing both angers and excites the lovers of New and Wonderful Things quite like the words “surface parking lots.” One one hand, surface parking lots are ghastly wastes of space and ghoulish shrines to an oppressive and outmoded “car culture” (or so we’re told); on the other hand, you can totally build stuff on them! Because, yeah, there are probably too many surface parking lots out there, and they are kind of big wastes of space (or so we’re told).
Which brings us to the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Last week, MSOE announced plans to build a four-story, 97,000-square-foot academic building on the surface parking lot on the corner of State and Milwaukee. The $76.5 million facility will be dubbed the Robert D. Kern Engineering Innovation Center, and it will have something to do with AI (of course).
“A key feature of the new building will be MSOE’s new Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence Education,” reads a press release, “which will guide initiatives across campus, attract top faculty talent, and support area businesses. The center will allow faculty, staff and students to rethink what’s possible and incorporate AI into their multidisciplinary programs and projects.”
The project is expected to break ground later this year. [OnMilwaukee]
• The former Hunger Task Force headquarters at 201 S. Hawley Ct. is being rezoned and redeveloped for new use. A representative from the site’s new owner, The Druml Company, says “the types of business we are looking for are clean, light industrial. We have had a florist interested. We have had a cabinet maker interested.” [Urban Milwaukee]
• Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport has broken ground on a new “state-of-the-art air cargo facility” located on the former 440th Airlift Wing campus. [OnMilwaukee]
• Back in 2023, plans were announced to transform a 50-acre former YMCA site on the city’s northwest side into an affordable housing development called Cudahy Farms Health Living Campus. It hasn’t happened yet (neighbors have concerns). Still, a new proposal calls for $6 million in city financing for the 1,100-unit campus. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
• Back in 2017, plans were announced to transform the former Wisconsin Avenue School at 2708 W. Wisconsin Ave. into a hotel. That never happened. Eight years later, Aurora Health Care wants to instead transform the school—closed since 2007—into a “collaborative health and wellness center” called The Beacon. [OnMilwaukee]
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