Shop Till You Sleep

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #187

This is a mall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

But of course, it’s not quite. Or, not quite anymore:

That’s not the full mall—an upper floor became apartments, with those entrance rooms/faux storefronts for privacy and faithfulness to the structure’s former use—but there are still stores and a food hall on the other floors. There’s also a building that became apartments next to the mall as part of the overall project: the one at the bottom middle of the satellite view.

Here’s a local news piece about the mall, with great photos of the redevelopment work as it was unfolding. He remembers the old days, and how the mixed-use project will help make the mall an important downtown fixture:

Every space was rented, every eatery busy serving food, most every store seemingly doing a bang-up business. I worked at Woolworth’s then and it was two stories and busy busy. By the early ‘90s, I worked at the Schwartz Bookshop in the mall and even then, the place was alive with activity.

But that would soon fade and ever since, the sprawling complex – from the former Gimbels along the river to Boston Store on 4th Street, including the gorgeous Plankinton Arcade (pictured above) and the so-called "new mall" between Boston Store and 2nd Street – struggled with declining sales, shuttered shops and a self-perpetuating ghost town reputation.

The taller building—14 stories—that is part of the redevelopment project has an interesting story too:

The developers of The Avenue are redeveloping the 14-story Majestic Building, 225-233 W. Wisconsin Ave., into a new apartment complex, Playbill Lofts. Built in 1907 for the Schlitz Brewing Company, the building formerly contained The Majestic theater at the rear of its lower levels and office space above.

But the theater didn’t survive the Great Depression, and the first two levels were absorbed in the Shops of Grand Avenue mall in the 1980s, with the first-floor long occupied by a Walgreen’s convenience store.

So it was part of the mall originally, in a sense, and is part of the new project too.

There’s this interesting bit about skipping subsidized affordable housing but managing to lease units at a low enough price to meet the definition of “affordable housing”:

Krsnak and Janowiec are creating what is known as “naturally occurring affordable housing” by keeping their costs low, including things like leaving a drop-ceiling in place in the hallways and not replacing the 15-year-old windows.

The developer told Urban Milwaukee 20% of the units, a mix of large studios and one bedrooms, will rent for $979 per month. It’s a price that effectively meets the federal tax credit target of charging no more than 30% of a household’s income for those making 60% of the area median income.

You never know what you’ll find in an old building, either:

There is also a series of two-story units in the middle of the building, due to a support structure that is likely the top of the former vaudeville theater.

A series of steel beams crisscross the fourth floor, appearing seemingly out of nowhere in certain units. Gorman repurposed a two-story interior space caused by the supports into a gymnasium and appears to have added new supports, but a sound issue still required the basketball court to be carpeted. Krsnak intends to use it as a co-working space.

The larger issue is that the steel pieces cut off the hallways, triggering Gorman’s two-story solution to create leasable space on the inaccessible floor. Krsnak will have a tough time dividing the units into more logical one-level layouts, but is considering options.

The more complicated a building conversion is, the more interesting it is. In one sense you’re just using the old structure(s) as a shell, but in another you really have to do real, complex adaptive work. And the best developers for these projects find ways to the final result feel…like this works, but it obviously have once been something else.

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Related Reading:

Park Deco

A Bright Future

Tear Down This Mall?

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