Couture owner late paying its property tax
The development firm behind the delayed Couture high rise is nearly nine months late on paying its 2018 property tax bill for the project site.
Barrett Lo Visionary Development LLC wants to develop the 44-story, 322unit apartment tower on a vacant lot at 909 E. Michigan St., just west of North Lincoln Memorial Drive.
A Barrett Lo affiliate, Couture LLC, as of Friday hadn’t yet paid its $353,796.57 property tax bill, according to city records.
The first payment was due Jan. 31. With interest, the bill as of Friday was $401,559.11, according to the city treasurer’s office.
Richard Barrett, who operates Barrett Lo, said the overdue bill was “an oversight on our part that we were made aware of on Friday.”
“We will be in touch with the City to promptly complete payment, just as we do for the millions of dollars in property tax that we pay for our other real estate investments,” Barrett said in a statement.
The delinquent property tax bill was first reported by radio talk show host Mark Belling, of WISN-AM (1130).
The 2.1-acre site has an assessed value of $12.9 million, according to city records.
Barrett Lo in 2016 bought the site from Milwaukee County for $500,000 under an agreement approved by County Executive Chris Abele.
That discounted sale price was needed to help make the Couture feasible, according to a report by a county consultant.
Barrett Lo demolished a former county bus facility in 2017 to create the development site.
But the Couture’s construction has been delayed because the firm hasn’t yet secured financing for the $122 million project.
The Couture has a preliminary approval for its main financing: a loan guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That would amount to 60% of the financing package, Barrett Lo Chief Financial Officer Joel Aizen said in September.
Barrett Lo in August hired Baird & Co. to help it find more equity investors. Those investors would account for 17% of the project costs.
Another private loan accounts for 8%, and city financing for the Couture’s transit plaza and other public improvements would provide 15% of the costs, Aizen said.
If the Couture’s transit center doesn’t open by the end of 2020, the Federal Transit Administration could demand Milwaukee County pay $6.7 million.
That’s because the FTA provided a 1988 grant to finance the bus facility.
Also, the city’s streetcar service, The Hop, plans to complete the lakefront loop from its main route by connecting parallel tracks on East Clybourn and East Michigan streets through the Couture’s transit plaza.
Failing to meet the December 2020 deadline for operating the lakefront loop could force the City of Milwaukee to repay a $14.2 million federal grant used to help finance the loop.
City and county officials have been in talks with the FTA about extending those deadlines.
City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux told a Common Council committee last week that Mayor Tom Barrett’s administration remains confident the Couture will be developed.
But Ald. Robert Bauman, a streetcar supporter whose district includes downtown, said city officials were “looking like complete fools.”
Under a 2016 development agreement, Couture LLC was given a deadline to begin construction — which has long since passed.
That contract allows the county to force Barrett Lo to return the development site in exchange for $425,000. That’s 85% of the purchase price.