King Drive library and apartment project gets boost

A delayed development that would replace Milwaukee’s King Drive library branch with a new library and apartments could be getting a boost with a new partner.

Developer Kalan Haywood would join the project team under a proposal that’s been recommended for approval by the Library Board’s Building and Development Committee.

Haywood’s developments include affordable apartments, financed in part with federal tax credits.

Those projects include City Place, 500 W. Walnut St. Its four-story, 51unit first phase is under construction.

Haywood also was a co-developer on last year’s conversion of the historic Germania Building, 135 W. Wells St., into an unusual 50-50 mix of 90 affordable and market-rate apartments.

His addition to the King Library development would be “a positive step,” said Sam McGovern-Rowen, who oversees construction projects for the city library system.

“Kalan’s group obviously brings a level of experience,” he said.

The Library Board in December 2016 selected Young Development Group LLC to replace the King Library branch, 310 W. Locust St., with a fourstory building.

It would feature a new library and retail space on the street level, and three upper levels with 44 market-rate apartments. That site is at the northwest corner of King Drive and Locust Street.

Three other Milwaukee library branches have been replaced by new libraries with upper level apartments, with another development under construction at 7717 W. Good Hope Road.

The city pays for the portions of the new buildings that have the library spaces, which it owns.

By including apartments, owned by the development firms, the new buildings also create property tax revenue.

The $15.6 million King Library development has been delayed mainly because it failed to receive federal New Market Tax Credits — one of its planned financing sources. Those credits help fund projects in neighborhoods with higher unemployment and poverty.