It’s a story not unlike many cities in the upper Midwest.
A series of manufacturing plant closures left Kenosha’s downtown mostly empty for many years.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the once-bustling manufacturing town saw companies like American Motor Corp., Anaconda American Brass and MacWhyte Co. shut down or reduce their operations in the city, eliminating thousands of jobs.
They left behind abandoned manufacturing plants that were turning to rubble, vacant storefronts in the historic downtown and a lakefront that was blocked off with a chain-link fence.
“Kenosha went through some very difficult times when our manufacturers pulled out,” said John Antaramian, who was elected mayor in 1992. “All of those major corporations left huge issues for the community. Kenosha had to reinvent itself.”
In the early 1990s, the city embarked on a multi-decade mission to diversify its economy and bring vibrancy back to the city’s downtown.
In 2000, a city-led initiative resulted in the development of 350 condos along with museums and green space on the site of the shuttered American Motors Corp. plant. The effort rehabbed and brought new tenants to the historic downtown storefronts over the next 20 years. More recently, developers have built several apartment buildings on the south end of the downtown area.
Kenosha’s proximity to Chicago and Milwaukee along the I-94 North-South corridor has spurred a boom of retail and industrial development along the interstate over the past two decades. Meanwhile, progress in the city’s downtown has lagged behind the booming development pace near the freeway.
But that could be about to change, thanks to a massive $450 million development project planned for a mostly vacant nine-block area of downtown Kenosha.
Milwaukee-based real estate developer Cobalt Partners and Fond du Lac-based C.D. Smith Construction Inc. are moving ahead on the project, which could eventually transform roughly 14 acres of the city’s Harbor Park district with more than 1,000 new housing units, 100,000 square feet of retail space, 420,000 square feet of office space, a hotel and green space.
The developers working on the project see a city with rapid economic growth and a downtown that isn’t quite showing it yet.
“It’s the fourth largest city in the state and yet really has a downtown that is a bit of a blank canvas,” said Scott Yauck, president of Cobalt Partners.
City officials see the project as an opportunity to complete a downtown revitalization effort that’s been decades in the making and can support economic growth for years to come.
“Cities only go in two directions: forward or backward,” Antaramian said. “This project will keep moving us forward.”
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The Harbor Park condominium development at the former American Motors Corp. site.[/caption]
Kenosha booms along the interstate
Situated on the shores of Lake Michigan, 40 miles south Milwaukee and 50 miles north of Chicago, Kenosha is geographically well placed with access to freshwater resources and two major economic and population centers.
This, in part, brought manufacturers to the city more than a century ago.
Now, the same assets have attracted many manufacturers and industrial users back to the region, creating an economic boom not in downtown Kenosha, but in the parts of the city and county that surround I-94.
Companies such as Pleasant Prairie-based Uline and Seattle-based Amazon have built several million square feet of warehouse space in Kenosha County. This year, Germany-based Haribo opened a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Pleasant Prairie.
“We have a lot of food processors and manufacturers, like Haribo, who need a lot of water for those functions, but also quick access to the freeways,” said Nicole Ryf, executive director of the Kenosha Area Business Alliance. “Kenosha’s geography is great for business.”
Between 2010 and 2020, Kenosha County saw a 24% increase in jobs. However, there was only a 2% increase in population and 4% increase in housing units in the same timeframe, according to data from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
“We’ve got thousands of people who live in Kenosha and go down to Lake County (Illinois) for work. We’ve also got thousands of people who live in Lake County or elsewhere in northern Illinois and come to Kenosha for work,” said Tim Casey, Kenosha’s director of city development. “But it’d be really nice if we could get some of those people who don’t live here to move up here.”
In an era when many industrial operations are far too large to be built in downtown areas and require quick access to freeways, many cities are working to create dense, vibrant neighborhoods to attract residents and visitors to their downtowns.
Kenosha is banking on using its industrial economic base to propel the city’s downtown into its next chapter.
“We can get all the growth out by the highway, but people can choose where to live, where to spend their time,” Casey said.
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Cobalt Partners’ development site in downtown Kenosha.
Credit: Jon Elliott of MKE Drones LLC[/caption]
Slow but steady growth downtown
Redevelopment of Kenosha’s downtown really began in the early 2000s when the city took over and demolished the former American Motors Corp. plant at the north end of downtown.
In its place now is the 70-acre Harbor Park district, which includes 350 upscale condos as well as the Civil War Museum, the Kenosha Public Museum, retail space and a public park.
“Before that, the downtown did not have a lot of activity,” Antaramian said. “… Harbor Park really triggered a lot of investment for the area.”
The downtown’s core is filled with mostly historic buildings, many of which have been rehabbed to house new small businesses, many of which have opened within the past 20 years.
“Having people downtown 24/7 really helped the businesses to succeed,” Ryf said. “For the most part, downtown really has turned into more of a hub for retail and restaurants, but there’s also a lot of housing going up.”
Milwaukee-based development firm Three Leaf Partners is working with Illinois-based Woodview Group LLC on an $11.8 million, 61-unit apartment building, called Theater Terrace, located at the south end of downtown. The building is currently under construction and is expected to be completed in spring of 2024.
Woodview Group also built the $17 million, 68-unit Lake Terrace apartment building at a site one block east. The building, which is currently 100% occupied, was leased in 75 days, according to Joe Stanton, vice president of development for Three Leaf Partners.
“Normally, for an apartment building like this, you would figure that it would absorb six, seven or eight units per month,” Stanton said. “This is a 68-unit building, so you’re looking at 20-plus units per month that are getting leased up. That’s a pretty astounding clip. You don’t typically see that.”
While Three Leaf wasn’t involved in the Lake Terrace project, Stanton noted Kenosha’s economic development and strong need for housing brought the firm to Kenosha for Woodview Group’s second building.
Woodview Group is also planning to develop one more apartment building, called Simmons Terrace, on the south end of downtown. That project, valued at $22 million, would house 101 apartments in a five-story building.
Those three buildings are near another two apartment buildings that Kenosha-based developer Bear Development opened in 2017, which together have 104 housing units.
“There’s certainly a lot of activity,” said S.R. Mills, chief executive officer of Bear Development. “Having additional housing options for people will continue to help retail and restaurants and add other vibrancy to keep the city active. I think there’s certainly ample room for growth, and I think good public-private partnerships with the city will help move it forward.”
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A map outlining Cobalt Partners and C.D. Smith’s development plans.[/caption]
The vision
All of these developments, plus a few others, have brought a sense of vibrancy back to the downtown area, city and business leaders say.
“The intention back in 2000 was to bring back the downtown, which we have done to a point, but it still needs more density to finish off what we started,” Antaramian said.
Downtown Kenosha has very few structures that are more than a few stories tall, including a seven-story 1928 building and a 10-story lakefront apartment building. Almost all of the city’s other buildings are five stories or less.
“One of the impressions I had coming to Kenosha over the years was the downtown was smaller than you’d expect for a city of this size,” Casey said. “You look at the building scale of downtown Kenosha, and you compare it to Racine and Green Bay, why isn’t there more of a downtown feel, a density in Kenosha?”
Between the downtown’s core, Harbor Park to the north and the apartment development to the south, most vacant lots in downtown Kenosha have now been redeveloped.
That is, except for a nine-block section in the middle. Much of that land is empty or used as parking lots.
“Is that what you want for your downtown?” Casey said, pointing to an aerial photo of the area in the Department of City Development office. “We want to knit our downtown back together.”
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Rendering of Cobalt Partners and C.D. Smith’s project looking east.
Credit: Cobalt Partners[/caption]
The plan
In 2019, Cobalt Partners and C.D. Smith each responded to a request for proposals with separate plans for the nine-block downtown development site. The city chose a different proposal, which ultimately did not come to fruition due to financing challenges.
That’s when the two firms, both with experience doing large-scale, multi-year projects, joined forces and approached the city again with a revised plan.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to activate the downtown,” said Yauck.
Cobalt Partners has a reputation of doing large-scale projects, rather than developing one building at a time. It was the development firm for the 60-acre Whitestone Station brownfield redevelopment in Menomonee Falls and the 40-acre 84South development in Greenfield. Similarly, C.D. Smith contributed to a 10-building redevelopment project in downtown La Crosse.
While smaller in size than some of Cobalt’s other projects, the 14-acre project in downtown Kenosha is one of the firm’s largest projects from the standpoint of impact and transformation, Yauck said.
The nine-block development area – all of which is already owned or controlled by the city or the developer – is bordered by Sheridan Road on the west, 5th Avenue on the east, 52nd Street on the north and 56th Street on the south.
The development’s most eastern block, which borders the Harbor Park condo development, would include around 80 townhomes or flats to add a buffer between the existing low-rise development and comparatively high, high-rise development that the developers have planned.
The three blocks west of that would include a trio of 10- to 12-story mixed-use buildings with retail and housing above. In total, they would have about 600 housing units and 55,000 square feet of retail space.
“They’re mid-rise buildings, but for Kenosha they may as well be high rises because that’s as tall as any building we currently have,” Casey said.
The northern two blocks of the development intend to create a sense of place and destination.
In addition to 420,000 square feet of office space, these blocks could include a 200-room, full-service hotel; an additional 42,000 square feet of retail space; an area for a market hall or food hall; a 2.5-acre park that could include a water feature and ice skating; and activated pedestrian space, or “laneway,” between the buildings. To cap it off, the area could have an approximately 20-story residential building overlooking the harbor.
The south end of the development will include another block of housing and space for a new city hall, as the existing city hall – previously a vocational school in the 1940s – would be torn down to make way for the 20-story residential building.
“We’ve really got an opportunity to build the next phase of downtown here,” Casey said. “As some of these buildings start to go up, people will start to change what they consider to be downtown Kenosha. When you drop in potentially six mid- to high-rise buildings, people are going to drive into Kenosha and go, ‘Wow, Kenosha has gotten a lot bigger. There’s a lot more going on downtown.’”
“I’m looking forward to the city actually having some taller buildings because we have very few tall buildings in Kenosha,” Antaramian said. “It’ll create the density we need. If we want the downtown to truly prosper and succeed, we need to have population downtown.”
Cobalt Partners and C.D. Smith worked with Chicago-based architecture firm SCB on the conceptual master plan and preliminary building designs. SCB designed the 35-story 7SEVENTY7 apartment building in downtown Milwaukee and the 31-story apartment tower under construction by Houston-based Hines in the city’s Historic Third Ward.
“Being able to create a vision that’s more comprehensive than a one-off project is really where the value is and the synergies lie,” Yauck said.
The impact
Construction will likely begin with the trio of retail-residential buildings.
Cobalt is expecting to start prep work on the project site later this year, with construction on the first blocks beginning in spring of 2024.
“You start building, adding hundreds of people, some new shops, you really create a 24/7 environment. It’ll support some more retail, some coffee shops and all that will come later in the development,” Casey said. “It’s probably going to take some time as the office market continues to recover, but we think that as we develop this part of downtown and the excitement that comes with it, it will become more marketable overall.”
The project’s $450 million price tag is being supported by the city with about $85 million in tax incremental financing.
“We certainly have confidence in putting together a project that’s financially viable and that’s the expectation, and I don’t see any reason that won’t be the case,” Yauck said. “It’s more challenging now (given costs of construction and capital), but we find ways to work through that.”
Project organizers and city officials are anticipating that, like many urban neighborhoods, the tenants of the development’s residential buildings will be mostly young professionals and some retirees.
For many years, Antaramian has worked to find ways to attract and retain young people in Kenosha. This development, complete with rooftop decks on almost every building and an overall “urban feel,” will help with that mission.
Further, Kenosha’s connection to Chicago via a Metra commuter rail line could draw some Illinois residents who might otherwise still live in the Chicago area for its density and vibrancy.
“We think there’s a lot of Illinoisans who have moved up to Kenosha already, and we think that’s a trend that’s going to continue,” Casey said.
For the Kenosha Area Business Alliance, the development could be a selling point for companies looking to expand or move to the Kenosha region.
“When we have an employer looking at maybe building a facility in Kenosha County, we can take them downtown and say, ‘This is where your employees could be living, they can have this vibrant quality of life. Your executives might even want to work or live here,’” Ryf said.
