Developer, city clash over Walker’s Point site

Officials want to keep office building zoning

The developer of Freshwater Plaza, in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood, wants to add more stores.

But that clashes with plans by Milwaukee development officials to wait for an office building at the mixed-use project.

That conflict came to a head during a city Plan Commission hearing Monday.

Wangard Partners Inc. opened Freshwater Plaza’s first phase, a fourstory apartment building with streetlevel commercial space, in late 2016 near the corner of E. Greenfield Ave. and S. 1st St.

A Cermak Fresh Market opened in June at the northeast portion of the site, near E. Scott and S. Barclay streets. A Sherwin-Williams paint store is under construction along S. 1st St.

The site includes a vacant 2-acre lot at 200-230 E. Greenfield Ave., just west of the railroad tracks, that’s owned by the city Redevelopment Authority and set aside for a future office building.

Ald. Jose Perez, whose district includes Walker’s Point, and Wangard Partners want that parcel rezoned for retail uses.

Perez and Mark Lake, Wangard’s director of retail development, said office zoning isn’t the best use for the site.

Perez said Walker’s Point has been attracting more residents who want retail services during the three years since Freshwater Plaza’s zoning was approved. Lake said there’s little demand for office space at the site.

So, Wangard is proposing 46,000 square feet of retail space.

There also would be 76 apartments in four stories, and one floor of parking, above the commercial space, under the firm’s preliminary plans.

City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux said Freshwater Plaza’s current zoning encourages a mix

of uses, including offices, and shouldn’t be changed.

The zoning also is designed to use Freshwater Plaza as an attractive “front door” to Milwaukee’s newly proposed Harbor District, Marcoux said.

That area is bordered roughly by S. 1st St., the lakefront, the Milwaukee River and Bay St./Becher St. The district includes the nearby University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, 600 E. Greenfield Ave., and future development sites.

The Harbor District’s “gateway” shouldn’t be defined by a low-rise retail use along Greenfield Ave. at Freshwater Plaza, Marcoux said.

However, Marcoux said he was open to Wangard’s preliminary proposal of a multi-story building with housing, instead of offices, along with first-floor retail space.

But that project should be done by working through the current zoning, he said.

The Plan Commission voted to recommend against the zoning change. That recommendation is to be reviewed by the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee at its Jan. 30 meeting.

Freshwater Plaza’s zoning, approved in 2014 by the Common Council and Mayor Tom Barrett, was the result of a compromise among Marcoux, Perez, Wangard and others.

The Barrett administration initially wanted the site reserved for an office building with hopes of landing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new local headquarters, which eventually landed in St. Francis instead.

Perez wanted a supermarket at the site — something his constituents had been seeking for years.

With the compromise, the site was zoned for the Cermak Fresh Market and other uses, including a future office building.