The Goll Mansion property on Milwaukee's East Side, the site of a controversial proposed apartment tower, is up for sale.
John Klement, director of capital markets with JLL's Milwaukee office, confirmed the site hit the market last week. Marketing materials by JLL pitch the property, located at 1550 N. Prospect Ave., as a "premier development opportunity" for interested buyers.
"We're seeing a lot of interest in the property, but it's still very early on in the marketing process," Klement said.
The roughly 0.6-acre site sits on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, and is home to the historic Goll Mansion. It is fully entitled for a planned 27-story, 192-unit apartment tower with 2,000 square feet of commercial space and a fifth-floor pool. The project also calls for moving the mansion to a different location on-site to make way for the new tower.
Milwaukee Department of City Development spokesman Jeff Fleming confirmed the exact project would be able to be developed under a different property owner or developer.
Any changes to the project, such as adding or removing a floor, would require new approvals from the city.
Madison developer Chris Houden has
owned the property since 2016. He did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Houden, of
Palisade Properties Management LLC, first filed plans for the Goll Mansion site apartment tower in
February 2016, though had been formulating plans for the site
stretching back to at least 2015.
The project netted some
initial approvals before it was
defeated by the Common Council in July 2016. The proposal required a supermajority vote, because residents of the next-door 1522 Prospect on the Lake condo building submitted a protest petition against the project. An
effort to revive the project failed in November 2016.
Houden then submitted
similar plans for the apartment tower in June 2017. The third time was the charm, as Common Council members
approved the $55 million project that September.
A member of the project team said in early 2018 that
construction would soon begin after they applied for a building permit. However, the project never moved forward since then.
The new marketing materials listing the site for sale note the property is one of the last development sites on the east side of Prospect Avenue, directly overlooking the lake. The area around the site is home to other high-rise buildings, including the 275-unit Landmark on the Lake and 283-unit Park Lafayette Towers.
Several other residential towers are in the works in the downtown and East Side. They include New Land Enterprises'
Ascent MKE, the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee's
Convent Hill South mixed-income tower, Mandel Group's Portfolio project and Barrett Lo Visionary Development's Couture project.
