Tosa to help finance Mayfair hotel with $9M

Wauwatosa would provide around $9 million to help finance converting an empty Mayfair mall office building into a hotel under plans that received an initial approval.

Those funds would come from new property taxes generated by the hotel.

Mayfair Hotel LLC would convert and expand an 11-story, 150,000-square-foot office building, near the northeast corner of N. Mayfair Road and W. North Ave., into a 12-floor, 196-room hotel.

The Common Council, at its Tuesday night meeting, voted 13-0 to approve a term sheet outlining the financing agreement. A tax incremental financing district for the project site also needs council approval.

That would allow Mayfair Hotel, an affiliate of Milwaukee development firm HKS Holdings LLC, to proceed with the project.

The proposal surfaced this fall. It would create an upscale hotel featuring a restaurant, a 4,500-square-foot ballroom and a 2,200-square-foot rooftop event space with an outdoor terrace.

The possible hotel brand isn’t yet being publicly identified. It would target business travelers who want to be in Wauwatosa but are staying in such communities as Menomonee Falls, Brookfield and Waukesha.

The hotel’s estimated property tax value would be more than $27 million, according to the term sheet.

The city would annually pay to Mayfair Hotel an amount equal to 90% of the hotel’s property taxes, totaling up to $8.8 million. That would occur over several years and reimburse the developers for some of their costs.

Ald. Dennis McBride said he voted in favor of the financing plan because it helps support Wauwatosa’s largest taxpayer, Mayfair.

He said the hotel would complement other new Mayfair developments, such as the Nordstrom department store; help attract more development to the Mayfair Road area; provide a service for employers at Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, Innovation Campus and Milwaukee County Research Park; and greatly increase the tax base.

“No other community in our region, outside of the city of Milwaukee, will have a hotel of this quality,” said McBride, chair of the council’s Financial Affairs Committee.

Tom Daykin can be reached at tdaykin@jrn.com.