One thing that jumped out is that there is a technical college, Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) in the area. We were aware that MATC had been looking for student housing for many years. Unfortunately, downtown real estate is among the most expensive in the market. So, we got the idea that we could convert one of these buildings to student housing. Thanks to the state of Wisconsin historic tax credit, that allowed us to buy down the basis in the redevelopment enough where we could meet that more affordable rental rate that MATC was looking for.
The more we thought about it, the adjacent Milwaukee Journal building was a great candidate for conversion to market rate multifamily housing. A lot of the units there are a little bit smaller, and that allowed us to keep the monthly rent at a lower threshold. We started to see this nice overlap between MATC student housing and market rate residential right next door. And then what really put it over the top was when we were approached by the Seeds of Health Tenor High School, a private charter school that was looking for classroom space, science labs, a library, and cafeteria.
It started to come together, this concept of how we reimagine these buildings in a way where we’re not only redeveloping them for the next hundred plus years, but also how we recreate that important mission critical role that this block played in the Milwaukee community.
