The transformation of Third Ward’s Commission Row
1 project nearly done, another underway
Starting in the mid-1990s, the pace of development within Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward began accelerating, with former warehouses and factories being converted into housing, offices, shops and restaurants.
However, for several years, one block remained rooted in the neighborhood’s past.
Now, the 300 block of N. Broadway, known by old-timers as Commission Row, is nearing the end of its slow transformation, with one large redevelopment project nearly done and the other project under construction.
“It’s a great story of perseverance,” said Matt Jarosz, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation Institute. “It takes a while in Milwaukee. But perhaps there’s a benefit to that.”
Commission Row, centered on N. Broadway between E. St. Paul Ave. and E. Buffalo St., for more than a century was the place where fruit and vegetable wholesalers sold their goods to Milwaukee-area grocers, restaurants and even pushcart vendors.
It now features one of the Third Ward’s largest retail spaces, an Anthropolgie store; restaurants and taverns such as The Wicked Hop and Cafe Benelux; and other shops, small offices and upper-floor housing.
Many of those buildings were redeveloped from 2003 through 2008. Now, two more projects are entering the block.
Broadway Market Lofts features 14 apartments at 325 N. Broadway: six units each on the building’s second and third floors, and two newly built penthouse units.
Developer Milwaukee View LLC, led by Lindsey Bovinet, started moving the first tenants there in May. The remaining apartments are to be completed by Aug. 1.
The apartments, with one to three bedrooms, range from 875 to 2,040 square feet. The monthly rents are from $1,665 to $5,500. There’s an additional fee for underground parking spaces.
Milwaukee View started renovating the former produce warehouse in March 2016. Nearly all the apartments have been leased, said Lindsey Bortner, the firm’s business manager.
The residents range from younger professionals to older empty nesters “looking for something fun in the city,” she said.
Milwaukee View also is creating 6,700 square feet of streetlevel retail space at 327, 329 and 331 N. Broadway.
There are no announced retail tenants yet. Future uses
could include clothing boutiques, a high-end wine and liquor store, a bakery or an eyewear shop, said listing broker Marianne Burish, a Transwestern executive vice president.
Also, just across the street, Joseph Property Development LLC is redeveloping Jennaro Bros. Inc.’s four-story former produce warehouse, 322 N. Broadway.
That project will create 6,600 square feet of street-level restaurant space and 25,600 square feet of upper-level offices, including a penthouse addition. The renovations, to be completed in spring 2018, will include underground parking.
The building is drawing strong interest from both prospective office and restaurant tenants, said Robert Joseph, who operates Joseph Property Development.
Its large metal awning, a characteristic found on other Commission Row buildings, provides shelter for sidewalk restaurant seating, Joseph said.
Also, commercial tenants like being near the Milwaukee Public Market, 400 N. Water St., Joseph said. The market, which last year drew 1.5 million visitors, helps anchor Commission Row with its back entrance at the northwest corner of N. Broadway and E. St. Paul Ave.
Jennaro Bros. was the last produce wholesaler to operate on Commission Row. It moved in 2005 to a building at 4050 N. Port Washington Road, on Milwaukee’s north side.
Other produce wholesalers had moved by the late ’90s: Maglio & Co. developed a building at 4287 N. Port Washington Road, Glendale; while A. Gagliano & Co. stayed in the Third Ward but moved to a former commercial printing plant at 300 N. Jefferson St.
Jennaro Bros., Maglio & Co., Gagliano & Co. and the now-defunct Goldman Morris Inc. for several years had remained on Commission Row even as developers began slowly converting Third Ward buildings during the 1970s and ’80s.
The development pace increased during the ’90s, especially after the Historic Third Ward Business Improvement District financed improvements such as new street lights, flower baskets and neighborhood entry signs.
The district’s work, however, initially skipped Commission Row. That was at the request of the produce wholesalers, who said those improvements, along with allowing diagonal parking in the middle
of Broadway, would interfere with their business.
“That’s the reason that block was left alone,” said Ron San Felippo, business district board chair.
So, while manufacturers and other wholesalers sold their Third Ward buildings to developers, Commission Row continued to be a place where the early morning hours were scenes of industrial-level commerce.
“It was a gritty kind of thing,” said Jarosz, who also serves as the Historic Third Ward Architectural Review Board’s coordinator.
Buyers and sellers made deals, with pallets of produce stacked on the block’s wide sidewalks beneath the buildings’ distinctive metal awnings. The block’s tavern, Palmy’s, was operated by a small-time produce wholesaler who died in a 1978 car bombing that police characterized as a mob hit.
Commission Row dates back to the Third Ward’s biggest development wave: the construction of more than 70 multi-story industrial buildings between 1892 and 1928 after a fire had destroyed most of the neighborhood.
The produce warehouses sprouted on two blocks of N. Broadway, between E. Clybourn and E. Buffalo streets.
“It was one of the most bustling, active sites in Milwaukee,” according to a 1984 petition nominating the Third Ward for the National Register of Historic Places.
That petition mentioned a 1910 local newspaper account of Commission Row, with a reporter counting 145 horse-drawn wagons in front of the buildings on a typical Friday morning.
Starting as early as 1925, there were repeated attempts to move the produce wholesalers off N. Broadway. City officials and others said the warehouses were causing traffic congestion and blocking new development.
The block between E. Clybourn St. and E. St. Paul Ave. lost its produce businesses when buildings were demolished in the 1960s to make way for I-794. By then, that block’s surviving building, the former Godfrey & Co. produce warehouse, 400 N. Broadway, had been sold for other distribution uses.
That nine-story building was one of Commission Row’s first redevelopment projects. It was sold in 2002 to developer Ken Breunig, who in 2004 finished converting it into the 30-unit Commission House condos, including a penthouse.
By then, Commission Row’s other produce wholesalers were moving to more modern buildings, opening up their former warehouses
for new uses. Some buildings took longer to sell with their owners demanding high prices for the suddenly valuable properties.
Buildings at 317 and 321 N. Broadway were converted into four upper-level apartments and street-level commercial space now used by Stephanie Horne Boutique and Lela Boutique. Red Elephant Chocolate took space at 333 N. Broadway, and The Wicked Hop restaurant and tavern opened at 345 N. Broadway — where it includes two levels indoors and sidewalk seating.
In 2007, Joseph Property Development bought a former warehouse, 301-315 N. Broadway, and leased most of the street-level space to Anthropologie, the Third Ward’s first national clothing chain. The firm converted the upper floors into offices for Johnson Controls Inc. and other companies.
Another major development landed in 2011, when Lowland Groups opened Cafe Benelux at 346 N. Broadway. That building had been used as a warehouse, and as Palmy’s Tavern, and was then vacant for several years before being converted into organic grocery Good Harvest Market in 2008.
Good Harvest’s owners hoped to draw customers from Milwaukee Public Market, which struggled after its 2005 opening before reviving with a 2007 format change. However, Good Harvest closed within 15 months.
Lowlands Group converted the grocery into a destination restaurant that includes rooftop and sidewalk seating. That revived a building that a decade ago was targeted for demolition to create an 18-story tower with a hotel and condos.
“It’s been a home run,” said San Felippo of the business district, which owns the Benelux building.
Once the Jennaro Bros. building conversion is done next year, the only undeveloped former warehouse on the block will be a three-story, 8,500-square-foot building at 339 N. Broadway.
Burish, who’s been brokering Third Ward leases for around 25 years, remembers buying fruit baskets directly from Jennaro Bros. as annual holiday gifts for her clients.
But while some people might miss Commission Row’s old atmosphere, others are likely glad that the block now has diagonal parking for diners and shoppers instead of delivery trucks blocking traffic, she said.
“This is the natural course of things,” Burish said.