The City of Milwaukee plans to sell the four-story, 76,350-square-foot building, known as the International Building, at 611 W. National Ave. in the Walker’s Point neighborhood, to a developer that plans to convert it into apartments and first floor commercial space.
The city acquired the 115-year-old building earlier this month through property tax foreclosure. It was previously owned by social service agency Esperanza Unida.
The city plans to sell the building for $1.3 million to 611 West National Avenue Milwaukee LLC, which is controlled by Northpointe Holding LLC. Callan Schultz and Andrew Dumke are the managers and members of Northpointe Holding and are affiliated with Keystone Development, which currently owns 1,700 apartment units in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio.
The development group plans to renovate the first floor of the International Building into commercial space and will convert the second, third and fourth floors into 36 apartments. They plan to use Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority multi-family financing and federal and state historic tax credits to fund the renovations. A condition of the WHEDA financing will require that 20 percent of the units be leased to individuals or families with incomes at or below 80 percent of the county median income. The remaining 80 percent of the apartment units will be leased at market rates.
Esperanza Unida plans to move its office to a yet to be determined new location, said general manager Manny Perez.
“We are happy to see the next stage coming for economic development for the International Building,” he said. “Esperanza Unida supported the foreclosure process as it prevented city of Milwaukee taxpayers from having to pay penalties to the federal government and eliminated debt for Esperanza Unida. We will support the new buyers and we support economic development along 6th Street.”
