Post office owners buy Third Ward building
A Chicago investors group that is an owner of the U.S. Postal Service’s downtown mail processing center and The Tannery office complex on the near south side has purchased a commercial building in the Historic Third Ward.
An affiliate of R2 Companies bought the five-story brick building at 214-228 E. Erie St., real estate records posted Monday show.
The buyers paid $9.65 million for the structure, which was built in the early 1890s and contains 19 commercial units, according to the Milwaukee Assessor’s Office.
R2 already holds an ownership stake in the million-square-foot Postal Service center at 341 W. St. Paul Ave. The company has said it plans eventually to convert the building into stores, restaurants, offices and a parking structure.
The Postal Service’s lease there runs at least through March 2025 and the agency could opt to extend it until 2040. But the Postal Service also has long planned to build a new processing center in Oak Creek, and recently asked the state Department of Natural Resources for a speedy review of that project — a sign that the downtown property could become open for redevelopment.
R2 and another Chicago firm, Polsky Holdings, bought the downtown facility in 2015 for $13.1 million.
In October 2018, R2 affiliates paid just over $25 million for The Tannery, which includes buildings totaling around 250,000 square feet along West Virginia Street, west of South Sixth Street.
R2 also has invested with the owners of the former Grand Avenue in acquiring neighboring office and retail space south of West Wisconsin Avenue and east of North Plankinton Avenue.