Community Within The Corridor
A $66 million project led by younger Black developers will bring 200 apartments to Milwaukee.
The $66 million development, bringing nearly 200 affordable apartments along with commercial and recreation space to Milwaukee’s central city, is called Community Within The Corridor. ● That’s appropriate. Because it took a community of younger Black developers and activists to make it happen. ● Led by Que El-Amin, the people creating Community Within The Corridor at West Center and North 32nd streets include a hip-hop artist, a nearby resident who helps feed her neighbors and a non-profit training program coordinator.
It’s not your typical Milwaukee development team. None of the local residents involved has done a project anywhere near as large as Community Within The Corridor — so named because it lies within the economically distressed North 30th Street Industrial Corridor.
But members of the group, some of them friends since high school, bring varying strengths to the project — and one overriding mission.
“We all had a passion to do economic development in the community,” said Mikal Wesley, president of Urbane Communities LLC, a real estate investment and development firm.
Wesley also is coordinator of Cardinal Stritch University’s Mission Fuel program that provides entrepreneurship and innovation training for nonprofit group leaders.
He and fellow investor Rayhainio “Ray Nitti” Boynes have known each other since their days at Riverside High School.
Boynes is a Milwaukee-based hiphop artist, songwriter and chief executive officer of Sharp Creatives, which organizes events and connects musicians and other artists with businesses.
Wesley and El-Amin, who operates development firm Scott Crawford Inc., were part of the Associates in Commercial Real Estate class of 2015-’16. That Milwaukee program, known as ACRE, encourages racial minorities to pursue commercial real estate careers.
El-Amin runs entrepreneurship training programs with his brother, Khalif, that focus on younger central city residents.
He also was involved in helping develop Villard Commons, a four-story, 43unit affordable apartment building at 3621 W. Villard Ave. That project, first proposed in 2016, opened in December.
El-Amin, Wesley and Boynes, all 36 years old, started working on Community Within The Corridor over four years ago. Construction is to begin in February.
“This was not an overnight success,” said Ald. Russell Stamper, whose district includes the development site.
The plans were publicly disclosed in September 2017 when El-Amin filed for a city zoning change at the 7-acre site, bordered by West Center, West Hadley and North 33rd streets and Union Pacific railroad tracks.
The six industrial buildings, dating to 1906, were once home to Briggs & Stratton Corp.
For decades they have been used mainly for storage — creating an underused two-block site just north of Master Lock Co.’s manufacturing operations.
El-Amin, Wesley and Boynes saw an opportunity to breathe new life into the neighborhood by converting the buildings into affordable apartments, as well as space for businesses, recreation and community activities.
The three men got to know nearby residents, asking them what they hoped to see at the site. They met Monique Bateman while working on a neighborhood cleanup drive.
Bateman, a 22-year neighborhood resident, operates Marjani House, a nonprofit group that helps feed hungry people and does other community activism. She serves as the development team’s director of community relations.
The developers’ race and youth were big assets in helping them relate to neighborhood residents, Bateman said.
And she appreciated their willingness to listen while creating plans for Community Within The Corridor.
“They know the need, and see the want,” Bateman said, “as opposed to trying to force a need.”
That need is great for investment, jobs and affordable housing.
Former manufacturing hub
The 30th Street corridor, which runs through the heart of Milwaukee’s central city, was home to dozens of manufacturers for much of the 20th century.
But a sharp decline in its industrial base in the 1980s, combined with longstanding racial segregation and other forms of institutional racism, fueled social problems that continue today.
Efforts to develop Community Within The Corridor faced big challenges.
One was finding a more established development firm to bring additional credibility and access to financing.
El-Amin and his partners shopped the project to several firms in Milwaukee and northern Illinois.
“Getting people to believe in what we were doing was a hurdle,” Welsey said.
The neighborhood has value despite its poverty, he said.
“People in this community aren’t distressed,” Wesley said. “They’re strong.”
The local developers in 2017 landed a partner in Roers Co., one of the Minneapolis area’s largest apartment development firms.
The connection came through Falamak Nourzad, a principal at Continuum Architects + Planners, the project’s architect. She worked with Roers on Maxwell Lofts, a Walker’s Point apartment building converted from a former industrial building.
Roers saw Community Within The Corridor’s potential, El-Amin said, in part because the firm was just entering the Milwaukee area and didn’t have preconceived notions about the neighborhood.
Even with Roers involved, the project had trouble obtaining financing.
The biggest cash source: $21 million raised by selling state and federal affordable housing tax credits.
Developments using those tax credits must provide apartments at below-market rents to people earning from 30% to 80% of the local median income.
Those credits are provided through an annual competition. Community Within The Corridor tried without success to obtain them in 2018 and 2019.
For Boynes, that amounted to a lesson in the value of patience.
“This is not a sprint,” he said. “It’s a marathon.”
And for Tia Cannon, who’s overseeing construction for the developers, it was about removing her emotions from the discussion and focusing on facts.
“For some people, it’s just an investment,” said Cannon, 30, who operates remodeling and construction firm ANC Real Estate LLC.
Cannon, who worked with El-Amin on another development, got involved with Community Within The Corridor in 2019. She grew up about a mile west of the project site.
The development finally received affordable housing tax credits in early 2020.
Other financing sources were assembled, including state and federal historic preservation tax credits, a bank loan and city cash generated by the development’s property taxes.
El-Amin had the job of explaining to those players why the deal would benefit them despite the risks.
He took to quoting legendary Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood ...”
Added El-Amin, “You can’t be limited by what people think about you.”
The developers bought the project site in May.
That same month, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, stirring months of nationwide protests against police violence and other forms of systemic racism.
Those events, including large demonstrations throughout the Milwaukee area, unfolded as the development team worked throughout summer and fall to complete the financing package and prepare for construction.
The 197 apartments will range from efficiencies to four-bedroom units.
The Community Within The Corridor will include a large recreation center, with basketball courts and other amenities for residents, which also will host community events. Outdoor rec uses will include a small skateboard park and a putting green.
The commercial space will include a child care center, grocery, laundromat and job training center.
Cannon said the renewed focus on racism shows why Community Within The Corridor is such an important project.
But she and her fellow Black development team members are used to overcoming such obstacles.
“It’s something we’ve been doing our entire lives,” Cannon said.