Mequon project includes hotel, 150 apartments
Heritage Commons would be on parcel city would sell for $1
A mixed-use Mequon project could create around 150 apartments, a boutique hotel and other commercial space under conceptual plans presented to city officials.
Heritage Commons would be on 13 acres north of Mequon Road, between the railroad tracks and Buntrock Ave.
The Common Council in November chose to negotiate with Shaffer Development LLC to do the project.
Heritage Commons would be on a parcel that the city would sell for $1.
Cindy Shaffer, who operates the firm, presented her conceptual proposal at a Common Council meeting Tuesday.
The development would have an estimated minimum property value of $26.8 million by 2019, according to a city report.
The project’s first phase would have a mix of residential units on the site’s northern portion, the report said.
Shaffer said Thursday she is planning one or two three-story apartment buildings with about 70 units each. There also would be eight to 12 townhome units.
The commercial phase would include preserving three brick buildings that
would face Mequon Road, and renovating them for stores, restaurants and professional service firms, according to the city report.
That commercial space, on the site’s southern portion, could include a public market.
Shaffer also is studying the feasibility of developing a boutique hotel with 70 to 100 rooms.
If the hotel is not developed, Shaffer said, she would likely instead develop a three-story, 35-unit apartment building.
More detailed plans and a development agreement would need council approval.
Shaffer hopes to begin site work for the residential phase in August, according to the city report.
Shaffer joined Wired Properties in developing Mequon Town Center just east of the Heritage Commons site.
It features a pair of four-story mixed-use buildings, with ground-floor retail space and 28 upperlevel apartments, and a two-story building for Cafe Hollander.
She also is developing the Lumberyard 1505 mixed-use project in downtown Grafton.
Construction is to begin in June on its first phase: a four-story building, with 72 apartments and 10,000 square feet of retail space.
Other Mequon development proposals near the Heritage Commons site include plans by Thomas Nieman, president of Mequon-based premium pet food maker Fromm Family Foods LLC, to convert a 19th-century former brewery building, 6411 W. Mequon Road, into a craft brewery.
The proposed Mequon Brewery, which hasn’t yet been presented to the Common Council, would be just across Mequon Road from Heritage Commons. Nieman and Shaffer are working together, according to information filed with the city report.