Studios become apartments
Redevelopment of Arts Building nearly finished
A few years before Milwaukee’s Gallery Night began, and long before it evolved into a quarterly event with dozens of venues, a former factory in the Walker’s Point neighborhood hosted the Studio Art Crawl.
People would wander among 31 small artist studios, carved out within three adjacent buildings south of W. Pittsburgh Ave. and east of S. 2nd St. The neighborhood was largely industrial, with nearby buildings used to make or store such items as leather finishes, agricultural seeds and packaging supplies.
Most have since been transformed to apartments, restaurants and other new uses, with another project nearing completion: the conversion of what was known as the Arts Building, with studios for painters, photographers and other artists, into Artistry, featuring 38 high-end apartments, as well as office and retail space.
The $13.2 million project, at 133 W. Pittsburgh Ave., marks a new use for a property that hosted dozens of artists during a 30-year period that saw Milwaukee’s visual arts scene grow.
“It gave so many of us a chance to actually have a studio,” said Ilze Heider, who designs and crafts leather purses.
The property’s three structures, a four-story corner building, a twostory building on S. 2nd St. and a five-story building on W. Pittsburgh Ave., date to 1894, according to a city report. They were used by a variety of companies, which made items such as bicycles, shoes, candy bars and seats for commercial trucks.
Oconomowoc real estate investor Joan Julien bought the property in 1984. She planned to seek tenants needing storage space.
But, around that same time, part of the Marshall Building, in the nearby Historic Third Ward, was being converted from warehousing to offices. Artists who had been using the space as studios needed new homes, she said.
So, Julien shifted her focus to studios, while leasing much of the ground floor to two artsrelated businesses: Mainstage Theatrical Supply Inc. and Sun Lighting Productions Inc.
“Oh, I had some wonderful tenants in that building,” Julien said.
Heider was among the first artists to move there. The initial monthly rent for her 1,300square-foot studio was $200.
“What we got was pretty basic,” Heider said. “But it included utilities.”
Another early tenant, Celeste Spransy Gass, helped launch the Studio Art Crawl in 1985. Spransy Gass, who died in 2010, got the name from the pub crawls that were beginning to appear in Walker’s Point, Heider said.
The events included artists who didn’t have studios in the building.
“We filled the hallways with artists,” Heider said.
The art crawls created a buzz among Milwaukee art patrons, said Pat Hidson, a painter.
“Just hordes of people would come rolling through,” she said.
The surrounding neighborhood then had a few bars but was mainly factories and warehouses.
“It used to be a virtual wasteland down there,” said Bill Odbert, a leather crafts artist who also served as the building’s long-time manager.
The art crawls helped inspire Gallery Night, now called Gallery Night and Day, which started in 1987.
Meanwhile, as rents continued rising in the now-hot Third Ward, Julien’s building became known as an affordable, friendly place for artists.
“Joan Julien was wonderful to work with,” Heider said.
“It was really a community of artists,” Hidson said. “We were supportive of each other.”
They said that started changing after Julien, facing a huge increase in her property assessment, sold the building in 2002 to Milwaukee real estate investor Tim Olson.
Olson raised rents, Heider and Hidson said. Both moved out, with Heider leasing space in Grafton and Hidson converting a garage into a studio at her Glendale home.
Meanwhile, the 2007 collapse in real estate prices, followed by the Great Recession, landed the building in foreclosure.
The property was sold in 2015 for $2.2 million to an affiliate of Cedarview Management, based in Bloomington, Ind.
Cedarview announced plans to convert the building into apartments and commercial space. That work started in the summer of 2016 after the remaining artists moved
out.
By then, the surrounding neighborhood had changed.
Former industrial properties were now being used for the Global Water Center offices and labs; housing, such as the Tewles Seed Tower Apartments and Historic Fifth Ward Lofts; and businesses that include Black Sheep restaurant, Indulgence Chocolatiers, Purple Door Ice Cream and Timothy J Kitchen and Bath.
“We all knew the Arts Building eventually would be converted,” Odbert said.
That’s a typical pattern, said Pamela Anderson, another former Arts Building tenant.
Artists searching for low rents establish studios in underused neighborhoods, which eventually attracts developers and then leads to rising rents — forcing artists to move out, she said.
The Arts Building tenants who left last year have moved to other Walker’s Point buildings, as well as Bay View and other areas, said Anderson, a painter and board president of Milwaukee Artist Resource Network.
There are other Milwaukee neighborhoods, such as Riverwest, that support the arts, she said.
Also, the Marshall Building, 207 E. Buffalo St., has increasingly made affordable studios available, despite the Third Ward’s ongoing redevelopment, Anderson said. She has operated a studio there since 2012.
The growth of Milwaukee’s visual arts scene has helped the city attract new residents and businesses, Anderson said.
“People want that cultural development in our neighborhoods,” Anderson said.
Meanwhile, the conversion of the Arts Building to Artistry is nearly finished.
The first residents will move into Artistry’s apartments on Sept. 15, said Suzanne O’Connell, Cedarview vice president of real estate.
The apartments are mainly one-bedroom units, but include sizes ranging from studios to three bedrooms, said Amy Knous, senior residential property manager with Colliers International’s Milwaukee office.
Artistry’s apartments feature 14-foot ceilings,
large windows, granite kitchen countertops, and washers and dryers. The units are on the upper floors, and include views of downtown’s skyline.
The monthly rents start at $1,260, with the one-bedroom units priced at $1,560.
Around a dozen of the 38 units have already been leased.
The residents include both younger professionals and empty nesters moving from the suburbs, Knous said. The neighborhood’s attractions include its many restaurants.
“This is a foodie’s paradise,” she said.
Meanwhile, much of the basic work on the 30,000 square feet of commercial space will be done this fall.
Most of the office space will be on the second floor, with retail space on the street level. Additional work to build out that space will be done by the commercial tenants.
Prospective tenants include law firms, restaurants and personal service businesses, such as salons and yoga studios, said Sal Strehlow, an associate broker with Colliers.
The commercial space includes exposed brick, large columns and concrete floors — all characteristics of the building’s industrial roots.
Artistry dropped its initial plans to build a five-level, 136-space parking structure on a parking lot just south of the building.
The Common Council and Mayor Tom Barrett last fall created a historic district along S. 2nd St. between W. Pittsburgh Ave. and W. Oregon St. Cedarview Chief Executive Officer Elliott Lewisopposed including the parking lot in the district.
Lewis told council members in October the parking structure probably would need brick cladding, costing around $600,000, to meet the historic district’s standards.
Cedarview dropped the parking structure plan because of the higher cost and because prospective renters said they would move to Artistry even without it, O’Connell said. Instead, Artistry is using its 48-space parking lot, as well as a nearby 50space parking lot.