Schlitz Park co-owner and developer Gary Grunau this week unveiled details of the $30 million renovation plans for the office complex on the north side of downtown Milwaukee.
The project will include remodeling of 350,000 square feet of office and public areas. The space upgrades will create enough additional space to accommodate tenants with 1,800 more employees at Schlitz Park, Grunau said. The Schlitz Park complex, including the ManpowerGroup and Time Warner buildings, currently houses about 4,200 employees. Schlitz Park has a total of 1.2 million square feet of office space, and about 80 percent of that is occupied, Grunau said.
The Schlitz Park renovation plans also include plans to demolish the 121-year-old former Schiltz Brewhouse building. At one time Harley-Davidson planned to put its museum in the building, but those plans fell through. Several other potential tenants considered the building, but it has severe structural problems that prevented any redevelopment projects from coming together, Grunau said.
“We have looked at this for 25 years and have spent about $4 million, and it didn’t work,” he said. "That’s it. It’s got to go.”
The Brewhouse building will be replaced with a park, one of two that will be added to the Schlitz Park complex as part of the renovation project. Historic artifacts from the Brewhouse building will be incorporated in the parks. The park at the Brewhouse site will have plants of beer ingredients: hops, barley, wheat and rye.
"We’re going to tell the story of the brewing industry and tell the story of Schlitz brewery,” Grunau said.
The time is right to renovate Schlitz Park because of a growing national trend of younger adults preferring to work in urban locations, which has encouraged more businesses to move to downtown sites, Grunau said.
“Young people don’t want to be out on the fringe,” he said. “People are coming back to the central core. People want urban living. There are some naysayers about Milwaukee and I think they’re full of you know what.”
Current tenants in Schlitz Park include: U.S. Bank, Metavante, Aurora Health Care, Marshall & Ilsley, Previant & Goldberg, United Way, Children’s Health Educational Center, Shaw, iCare, State of Wisconsin, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, ECE, Gilbane, DPI, Assurant and Kaplan College.
Grunau said Schlitz park is “seeing very good activity,” from prospective tenants right now. The Defense Contract Management Agency, part of the U.S. Defense Department, recently leased 10,000 square feet of space in the Keg House building at Schlitz Park and will move there in a few months, Grunau said. That building is now 100 percent leased, he said.
Schlitz Park has a new slogan, “the best of all worlds,” and will seek to offer a modern office environment in a convenient urban location, Grunau said.
“We’re trying to create an urban office park that is the best of all worlds, that can compete with any location, suburban or urban,” he said.
Other features of the Schlitz Park renovation will include: free campus-wide Wi-Fi, a conference center, a fitness center, expanded bicycle parking, alternative fuel vehicle parking and an electrical vehicle charging station.
Schlitz Park will seek U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification for all of its buildings, Grunau said. A major goal will be to make the office park accessible for people to walk and bike to work, he said.
“We’re going to have a bicycle-friendly Schlitz Park,” Grunau said.
Schlitz Park also plans to extend Galena Street through the property to 2nd Street. A request might be made to the city for public funds for that part of the project, Grunau said.
The renovation project is expected to begin this year and will be complete in 2013. The architect for the project is Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects.
A Schlitz Park brokers open house will be held today from 4-7 p.m. at the office park’s new leasing center at 1555 N. RiverCenter Dr. Jim Cavanaugh of RFP Commercial Inc. is handling leasing for Schlitz Park.
