Stone Creek Coffee to open cafe on Downer Ave.
Corner site has been vacant since 2009
Milwaukee roaster Stone Creek Coffee will open a cafe and large patio at 2650 N. Downer Ave., a space that has been vacant since 2009.
Stone Creek’s announcement Monday of the cafe due in late fall amounts to a big boost for the Downer Avenue Business Improvement District, which has had some longstanding vacancies.
Stone Creek founder Eric Resch said in announcing the new cafe that the project was personal for him.
“I lived a few houses north of this site on Downer. I celebrated a lot of great milestones there: my first house, getting married, and our first son,” Resch said. “For years we watched as the street changed. The old bank site is an important anchor of this street, and it has been empty for a long time. We are excited to rehab this corner and make it awesome.”
Resch added that the company’s intention to incorporate a patio with the building drew out the planning.
“This is about reinventing an iconic corner in Milwaukee,” he said.
In place of the parking lot beside the building, the cafe will have a patio with open-air seating and green space, and it will have a three-season porch. Stone Creek will renovate the facade of the 1912 building to restore brick as best it can, removing tile and other materials.
The renovation also will give the cafe a walk-up window for purchases at the sidewalk.
Managing director Drew Pond said the Downer Ave. cafe will have seating for around 50 inside and about another 50 on the patio. The design, by LP/w Design Studio, resembles that of the roaster’s Madison cafe, he said.
“It should be warm; it should feel like home,” he said.
The cafe on Downer should bring life to a corner that’s been quiet for years.
In 2015, an investment group with ties to New Yorkbased C-III Capital Partners LLC took control of the Downer Ave. building that will house Stone Creek and several other buildings on the street through a foreclosure sale.
The buildings, at 2551-2597 N. Downer Ave. and 2608-2650 N. Downer Ave., were owned by Downer Delaware LLC, a group led by Joel Lee, president of Van Buren Management Inc.
Downer Delaware owed $10.5 million to its lender, according to court records. It stopped making loan payments in January 2014, leading to a foreclosure suit.
Their tenants include Starbucks, Boswell Book Co., Downer Theatre and Pizza Man restaurant on the west side of Downer Ave., and Cafe Hollander, Breadsmith, Optix on Downer and Downer Wine & Spirits on the street’s east side.
The future Stone Creek will use space that once housed an Associated Bank branch, before it moved in 2009 to 2590 N. Downer Ave.
The Downer Ave. cafe is to be Stone Creek’s 13th cafe and its first on Milwaukee’s east side. The 12th to open will be at 7954 W. Harwood Ave. in Wauwatosa, expected mid-summer. The roaster’s first Chicago cafe is due next year.